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Mr Ekow Panyin Eduamoah, the Central Regional Minister, has appealed to churches and mosques to make cleanliness and behavioural change an integral part of their sermons to support the fight against cholera.
He said the fight against the disease could not be won if education and sensitisation were left to health officials and the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) alone. “We want the pastors and imams to take a prominent role in the education and all other institutions must come on board. That is the only way we can get the information to the people,” he appealed.
Mr Eduamoah made the call when he visited some communities in Cape Coast to assess the sanitation situation in the wake of the cholera outbreak in parts of the region. The Minister also went to the Cape Coast Metro Hospital to visit some cholera patients at the facility’s treatment centre.
His tour uncovered an awful sanitation situation in most of the communities. He saw that open defecation and heavily choked gutters were pronounced in highly populated places like Brofoyedur and Amanful. Over there, many households with toilets had connected their toilet facilities to the open gutters, which were choked with silt and plastic waste.
The seashore had become a dumping site and a defecation spot for most of the dwellers and the communities were swallowed by filth, chiefly plastic waste. The terrible situation is compounded by an acute water shortage. Mr Eduamoah and his team spotted people casually cooking and selling by open gutters filled with excrement. He expressed utter shock at the situation and directed that immediate actions should be taken to alleviate the situation to ward off the cholera disease.
Mr Eduamoah was particularly worried about the economic consequences of the outbreak and its impact on the government’s development agenda. He observed that the situation was a behavioural one and called for intensified education and sensitisation. Mr Eduamoah also directed the Metropolitan Assembly to deploy tankers to supply water to citizens in the wake of the acute water shortage. The water supply is expected to assist with the fight against the cholera outbreak.
Source: GNA
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