The Sissala East Municipal Director of Health, Alex Bapula, has expressed worry about the many challenges that Coronavirus disease pose to healthcare delivery.
Mr Bapula said as more people are encouraged to stay home because of the rise in confirmed cases of the COVID-19 in the country, health facilities around the Sissala East Municipalities have begun reporting lower OPD attendance.
He said even more worrying is that pregnant women across the Municipality are refusing to honour their antenatal care visits to the health facilities.
The Health Director said the situation could lead to increase in unskilled home deliveries among these women.
Speaking to GBC’s Mark Smith, Mr Bapula said to ensure that pregnant women are still able to access proper healthcare without visiting the health facilities, the Sissala East Municipal Health Directorate has put measures in place to increase home visits by community health nurses and midwives.
“What we are now doing is that the community health nurses go into the various communities, mobilise them [pregnant women]. We plan with them [pregnant women] and put them in clusters. Five people can come today and we spend the whole day on them and others come another day. We are also using our health volunteers to go round, checking those who have defaulted. Those who have defaulted, we ask the midwives to visit them and then do what we call, domiciliary midwifery,” he explained.
COVID-19 SITUATION IN THE SISSALA EAST MUNICIPALITY
The Sissala East Municipality has seven confirmed cases of the Coronavirus. The Sissala East Municipal Director of Health said the seven are asymptomatic and are in good shape. He mentioned that they are receiving treatment at a hotel in Tumu that has been adapted to serve as an isolation centre for COVID-19. Mr Bapula mentioned that the patients are currently waiting on their second tests after they were confirmed positive. He said the results of the tests will show whether the seven individuals still have the virus or not.
Mr Bapula said the Directorate is doing its best to provide sanitary materials for the patients while providing them with nutritious daily meals to aid in their recovery. He appealed to government and well-meaning individuals and organisations to support the directorate with PPEs and other sanitary materials. The Municipal Health Director mentioned that some of the isolated persons are breadwinners of their families thus the need to support them with some food products and other economic relief packages when they are reintegrated into society.
On education, he said the Directorate sought the support of local musicians to produce songs that conveyed messages about how to break the transmission of the Coronavirus while addressing some of the myths and misconceptions associated with the virus.
Mr Bapula added, “the Directorate together with the Municipal Assembly are running continuous sensitization programmes on radio while visiting communities beyond the reach of the radio waves with information vans.”
DISRUPTION OF HEALTH PROMOTION WEEK IN DBI
Health Promotion weeks are celebrated in the second week of May every year. The week is dedicated to encouraging children less than 5 years to access all available health intervention programmes. It also affords health professionals the avenue to monitor child growth and enhance the intake of Vitamin A supplements among children while encouraging the vaccination of children. During this period, health professionals visit communities where uptake of these activities is low.
The Daffiama-Busie-Issa District Director of Health, Emmanuel Sanwouk said activities have been particularly difficult to undertake because of some of the protocols put in place because of the disease.
He disclosed that while undertaking activities related to the celebration of the Health Promotion Week in the DBI District, some persons actively hid from the health professionals. Mr Sanwouk explained that although residents had been educated on the mode of transmission and symptoms of the COVID-19, they were unwilling to go through the necessary processes with regard to testing and isolation.
“The health staff have been trained and everyone is very alert trying to pick up any slight symptoms of COVID-19 in any person they meet. The population has come to understand that once you are suspected of Coronavirus, you will be isolated; if you are found positive, you have to be quarantined at a treatment centre. All of these affect their economic activities and so it is not easy to get people to accept that they are suspected of COVID-19 and so you are isolating them,” he said.
Mr Sanwouk continued: “most people are not comfortable with the COVID-19 arrangements so whatever they can do to ensure that they do not come into contact with you [a health professional] to suspect that they have COVID-19, they try to do that.”
On breaking the transmission of the COVID-19, Mr Sanwouk appealed to stakeholders to ensure that sanitary products like hand sanitizers, face masks and hand gloves are made affordable for the rural poor.
EARLY TEST RESULTS ARE KEY
The Mental Health Focal person at the Wa Municipal Health Directorate, Sylvester Basagnia has said that the early tests results for persons in quarantine or isolation are key to help manage the anxiety of persons suspected to be COVID-19 positive. Mr Basagnia explained that due to the many misconceptions and myths about the Coronavirus, persons who are suspected to be carrying the virus go through a lot of emotional stress and trauma.
He explained that the only way to deal with that kind of trauma is to reduce the waiting time for COVID-19 test results. This he said will allow individuals who have the virus to focus on recovery while those who are tested negative can resume their normal activities.
Mr Basagnia commended government for their effort towards educating Ghanaians but called for more to be done to enable communities to deal with issues of stigmatization. He also called on government to as a matter of urgency equip laboratories in the Upper West Region with the necessary equipment to enable to region perform its own COVID-19 tests.
ILLEGAL ENTRY INTO GHANA
Meanwhile, thirty-eight people were arrested at various parts of the Upper West Region for using unapproved routes over the weekend. Seventeen of the arrested persons used unapproved routes around Hamile in the Nandom Municipality while the remaining twenty-one used an unapproved entry point at Dipke in the Lawra Municipality.
These persons mostly Burkina Faso nationals were screened by health professional and returned to authorities on the other side of the border. According to the PRO for the Upper West Regional Ghana Immigration Service Command, Immigration Controlling Officer, Ibn Yussif Seidu, a number of the arrested persons claimed they entered the country through the Upper West Region, to enable them proceed to parts of the Ashanti Region to engage in farming activities while others said they were in the country to engage in trading activities.
The Lawra Municipal Commander for the GIS, ASI Kingsford Agekum-Hene mentioned that those arrested in Lawra included 14 Ghanaians who traveled from Burkina Faso, entered the country illegally and had wanted to proceed to Techiman to engage in farming activities.
He called for an enhanced collaboration between members of the community and security agencies to prevent unlawful entry and exit through unapproved routes.
Story filed by Mark Smith.
