
HEALTH
Tema Metro Health DDNS calls for increased hand washing to fight cholera

Date Created : 2/4/2025 12:00:00 AM : Story Author : Laudia Sawer/Ghanadistricts.com
She said handwashing played a critical role in the covid-19 era, helping to control the spread of the disease. “Let’s go back to the COVID era and do the hand hygiene that helped us fight the disease.”
She also encouraged them to sanitise their hands when clean running water was not available for hand washing.
She was speaking at a stakeholder engagement organised by the health directorate to plan on best practices to curb the spread of cholera following the confirmation and treatment of the infectious disease at Kpotame, a suburb of Tema Manhean.
Meanwhile, during the engagement, issues of lack of water to fill Veronica buckets in schools in Tema Manhean came to the fore.
Accordingto a representative from the Tema Metro Education Directorate, even though teachers were encouraging the pupils to practice proper hand washing, it had become difficult for the schools to provide the water.
She appealed to the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO) to help provide water storage tanks for the schools to rely on for water as a measure to prevent a spread of cholera in densely populated towns.
Mr. EdwinAfotey Ablade Odai, the Tema Metro Disease Control Officer, said availability of clean water was important in the fight against cholera, adding that contaminated water was one factor in the spread of the disease.
Mr. Odai, touching on other environmental factors contributing to cholera, mentioned contaminated food, human habits favouring water and soil pollution, low standards of personal hygiene, lack of education, and poor quality of life.
He said the immediate sources of infection were the stools and vomit of cases and carriers, adding that children were 10 times more susceptible than adults; the less immunity, the higher the risk; people with low gastric acid levels, highest in the lower socioeconomic groups; and the movement of the population.
The disease control officer said the incubation period of cholera was between one and three days, with symptoms including mild diarrhoea to sudden severe diarrhoea, mucus and intestinal tissue visible in faeces, muscle cramps, vomiting, loss of skin turgor, and weak pulse.
He called on stakeholders to play their respective roles to help curb the spread, saying cholera had become an increasing public health concern around the world which kills an estimated 95,000 people each year, infecting 2.9 million more people.
“The WHO reports 815,314 cases of the disease from April 27 to October 10, 2017,” he added that “5,000 people are estimated to be infected per day.”