William N-Lanjerborr Jalulah
28 October 2008
Bolgatanga — THE UPPER East Regional Minister, Mr. Alhassan Samari, has commended the largest waste management company in the country, ZoomLion Ghana Limited, for contributing significantly to the sanitary environment in the region.
He hoped that health experts in the region would take effective charge of the clinical infection prevention and control measures, in collaboration with Zoomlion Ghana Ltd., in the professional management of the General Hospital sanitation systems.
Mr. Samari gave the commendation in a speech read for him by his deputy, Mrs. Agnes Asangalisa Chigabatia, during the regional launch of the National Sanitation And Disease Prevention campaign, in Bolgatanga.
The collaborative agencies of the campaign include the Ministry of Health, National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA), Ministry of Local Government, Rural Development and Environment, and the Ministry of Education, and ZoomLion.
The Regional Minister was hopeful that when this was done, the prevalence of sanitation-related diseases would reduce drastically. Statistics indicate that 60% of communicable diseases were due to poor sanitary conditions and practices in our homes, health facilities and workplaces.
Notably among these, were malaria, the number one killer in the country, cholera and diarrhoea. The Regional Minister said poor sanitation anywhere, was a serious threat to good health, and this was more so when hospitals had poor sanitation conditions.
Mr. Samari regretted that Ghanaians had taken matters of sanitation for granted for many years, and it was timely that ZoomLion was directing attention to the sanitation at health facilities.
He said as a result of then high volume of activities that take place daily in the health facilities, these facilities acquired infections to a large extent, and this could be traced to poor sanitary practices and standards.
He, therefore, stated that disease prevention, through promoting high sanitary standards in the health facilities, must be given high priority.
The Medical Director of the Bolgatanga Regional Hospital, Dr. Richard Anangura, said the hospital had identified sanitation as a major challenge, and had therefore partnered ZoomLion Ghana Ltd. to address this challenge, by contracting out the cleaning of the new maternity block to the company.
The Regional Manager of the NHIA, Mr. Roger Ayine Aposs, said the scheme would do better if it placed emphasis on preventable, rather than curative measures, since that could reduce the financial burden on the scheme.
He observed that the national environmental situation on health and sanitation was poor, but precarious in the region, hence the need for a behavioural change in the people's actions towards environmental health.
The Public Relations Officer of ZoomLion Ghana Ltd., Oscar Provencal, announced that the campaign would last for the next three months, and during this period, about 3,000 to 4,000 people would be employed to help run it.
He suggested that instead of people paying fines for littering the environment, they should be given community services, so as to shame them.
The Paramount Chief of the Sekoti Traditional Area, Naba Sigri Bewong, who chaired the function, appealed to the media to make spaces/airtimes for sanitation issues, especially in the local languages, to help curb the menace of poor sanitation.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2008 Ghanaian Chronicle. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
