Health practitioners in Ghana have warned the government and general public of a possible cholera outbreak as rainfall intensifies in the country.
In an encounter with the media on Friday, August 4, Chairman of the Emergency division of the Public Health Association, Dr Ishmael Norman said as rains intensify across the country over the next 3 – months, the chances of a cholera outbreak would increase due to the poor sanitation conditions in highly populated urban areas, especially in coastal communities.
Dr Norman is recommending immediate measures to clean up the city and the institution of a sanitation tax to keep people conscious of their roles in keeping the environment clean, adding that, “diseases have no preference “.
What a cholera outbreak would mean for government and the economy
Following the 2015 and 2016 cholera outbreak which claimed about 600 lives, government increased the budget for sanitation by over 300%: from $14 million to nearly $70 million over the last one and a half years.
It is therefore essential that government adopts a more aggressive approach to public sanitation in an effort to limit the risk of a possible cholera outbreak and the ‘unplanned spending’ it will require and, save much needed financial resources for capital projects.