“*The Ghana Health Service (GHS) has confirmed the detection of the dreaded Lassa fever in Ghana.*<\/p>\n
The disease is transmitted to humans via contact with food or household items contaminated with the urine, saliva faeces, and blood of infected rodents.<\/p>\n
The Director General of the GHS, Dr Anthony Nsiah-Asare who confirmed this in a radio interview with Accra-based Peace FM said the confirmation followed a test conducted by the Nougouchi Memorial Institute in Accra.<\/p>\n
Dr Nsiah-Asare, therefore, called on the public to be extremely cautious of roddents and maintain good hygiene.<\/p>\n
He also urged the public to report any suspected case of the disease.<\/p>\n
The GHS in February issued an alert of the likelihood of outbreak of Lassa fever in the country.<\/p>\n
The disease is said to have already affected several countries in West Africa with over 300 cases and 31 deaths in Nigeria.<\/p>\n
The GHS recommend the following to all health workers and institutions:<\/p>\n
1. Surveillance on Lassa fever and Acute Haemorrhagic Fevers in general (using case definitions) should be enhanced.<\/p>\n
2. Suspected cases of Lassa fever should be managed in specific isolation conditions<\/p>\n
3. Health workers should adhere to regular Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) measures to prevent and protect against possible nosocomial transmission<\/p>\n
4. Blood sample from suspected case(s) should be taken and safely packaged and sent to Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research (NMIMR) for laboratory investigations<\/p>\n
5. All levels (National, Regions, Districts and Facilities) are requested to update their preparedness and response plans for Lassa fever and VHF in general, sensitize the respective staff and create necessary public awareness.”<\/p>\n
I read the above notice and got worried about\u00a0how we behave in our part of the world with dead bodies. This is where people would want to treat their enemies better. They do not mind to keep a dead person in their car without knowing the Cause of Death (COD) which could be very transmissible.<\/p>\n
Having heard about the news of the confirmed case of Lassa fever in one of the hospitals in Ghana, I stepped out for lunch and on my way home, saw a taxi with corpse covered in a sitting position just like any other\u00a0passenger. To avoid any confrontation, I went further down the road and reported to some service personnel who were at a police post. Unfortunately, I returned and the car had disappeared.<\/p>\n
It is for our own good to avoid such behaviour and use the right vehicles for the purpose of carrying dead bodies. I am not comfortable to blame people so much since not all vicinities have the hearse. So in the midst of such scarcity, people after carrying bodies with their cars should take it through thorough disinfection and cleaning.<\/p>\n
We should be mindful and protective of the living than thinking of what we will make from carrying corpse as passengers. It is dangerous and that must be stopped. This should add to the call of health experts to sit up and let our public health provisions work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
“*The Ghana Health Service (GHS) has confirmed the detection of the dreaded Lassa fever in Ghana.* The disease is transmitted to humans via contact with food or household items contaminated with the urine, saliva faeces, and blood of infected rodents. The Director General of the GHS, Dr Anthony Nsiah-Asare who confirmed this in a radio […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-professional"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adugyasidennis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adugyasidennis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adugyasidennis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adugyasidennis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adugyasidennis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/adugyasidennis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1281\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adugyasidennis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adugyasidennis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adugyasidennis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}