Over 15,000 ebola cases reported worldwide – GHS
Dr Badu Sarkodie, Director of Public Health, Ghana Health Services (GHS), on Wednesday said over 15,000 people were reported to be infected with the Ebola virus from eight countries including Spain, the United States of America, Nigeria and Senegal.
He said so far more than 5,000 deaths resulting from the disease had been reported, with majority of them from Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone.
Dr Sarkodie said this during a forum on the prevention of Ebola organised by Development Challenge, a think-tank.
On the Ebola situation in the endemic countries, he said the situation, especially in Liberia, had now become stable, with that of Guinea coming down while the situation in Sierra Leone was still on the ascendency.
He said although Ghana had not recorded any case of the disease, we should all be cautious and desist from acts which could endanger us.
“We should all be careful not to get the disease into our families as any one member who gets the disease is likely to infect the whole family with it,” he said.
Dr Sarkodie said by January next year, 250,000 doses of the Ebola vaccines would be ready for distribution to mainly countries which had recorded incidences of the disease and those at high risk of contracting it.
Dr Victor Bampoe, Deputy Minister of Health, debunked the perception circulating in Kumasi that someone had contracted the disease explaining that no incidence of the disease had been recorded in any part of the country.
He expressed the government’s readiness to work to ensure that Ghana continued to be rated as Ebola free by all standards.
He enumerated on some of the measures to prevent the disease from getting into the country including the establishment of three Ebola Isolation Centres located in Tema, Kumasi and Tamale and screening of all persons who passed through the country’s borders with state-of-the-art machines.
Alhaji Haruna Rashid Ibrahim, Executive Director, Development Challenge, said the forum on Ebola had become important due to the havoc it was wrecking on countries in Africa, especially the three countries which had become endemic.
He said the forum, which attracted students from senior high schools and the University of Ghana, was to educate Ghanaians on the dreadfulness of the disease and how to prevent it.
Source: GNA