President Nana Akufo-Addo has lamented the death of over 40 people in Ghana to Cerebrospinal Meningitis, even, as the country still battles the coronavirus pandemic.
Consequently, the president has made assured the people of tackling the cause of the disease to prevent its further spread and rising cases of death in the Ghana.
“The recent, tragic CSM outbreak, with over forty (40) deaths, has reaffirmed the need for ready access to such infectious disease control centres, even though, in our time, nobody should die of the disease. Early reporting is what is required, and I implore everybody to heed this call,” the president said.
President Akufo-Addo, who spoke on, Sunday, during a national broadcast, where he informed Ghanaian on measures put in place by the government to curb the spread of the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Ghana, called for cooperation.
The killing people by Cerebrospinal Meningitis outbreak is rampant in the Northern part of Ghana.
This far, the Upper West Region has recorded 40 deaths from the disease out of about 258 confirmed cases in the region, while there are also records of deaths in the Upper East Region of the country.
The Ghana Health Service (GHS) recently attributed the challenges with tackling the disease to the lack of financial resources.
A team of experts were on Thursday, April 16, 2020, dispatched to the Upper West Region to help fight the CSM cases.
Earlier, the Ghana Health Service (GHS) had disclosed that the current outbreak of Meningitis in the Upper West Region is caused by a new strain of bacteria that has no vaccine.
The Ghana Health Service, however, said even though there is no vaccine for this strain causing the outbreak, there is an effective treatment upon early reporting and initiation of the said treatment.
The Modern Ghana reported that while addressing the nation, President Akufo-Addo also made the case for the need for more infectious disease control centres across the country.
“We are going to beef up our existing laboratories, and establish new ones across every region for testing. We will establish three (3) infectious disease control centres for each of the zones of our country, Is, Coastal, Middle Belt and Northern, with the overall objective of setting up a Ghana Centre for Disease Control,” he added
