My journey through Graphic 15

The reason for the almost two-hour flight was that Benin is ahead of Ghana by an hour, I was to learn to my surprise.

Just a country (Togo) between us and a one-hour time difference – unbelievable! I muttered.

Small airport

I noticed on arrival too that Benin’s international airport was smaller in size and was undergoing a facelift.

With three booths but only two operational, we checked in with the immigration officers, picked our luggage and exited to a waiting minibus from the hotel we would be lodging at for the workshop.

Not without some heartache though. I have always wondered how and why there is always the case of a passenger whose luggage did not arrive or cannot be found.

A colleague from Sierra Leone, who boarded earlier, could not find her luggage when we arrived.

She was told by airline staff that apparently, her luggage was not put on the plane after all.

Hmm! But why?

I was impressed, though, with the Azalai Hotel, which looked like a recent addition to the hospitality industry in Cotonou and had a very nice view over the Atlantic Ocean.

Cholera

The training received at the workshop came in handy, as Ghana experienced its worst cholera outbreak in recent years by July that same year.
I represented WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene) journalists on a national committee put together by the government to fashion steps to handle the health threat, so I was able to furnish the Daily Graphic with exclusive and timely reports on the cholera situation across the country.

My first report was published on August 6, 2014, and it was on a 100-day contingency plan that had been put in place by the government to fight the outbreak of cholera in the country.

The Chairman of the National WASH in Emergencies (WinE) Technical Working Group, Kweku Quansah, disclosed that GH¢213,000 had been set aside for activities to deal with the epidemic across the country.

Speaking at the group’s first meeting since the outbreak of the disease five weeks earlier, Mr Quansah said the amount was in respect of short-term measures lined up to deal with the outbreak.

He said many contractors had been identified to assist in the evacuation of mountains of piled-up refuse at certain locations in the country, some of which were as old as six years.

The purpose of the meeting was to receive an update on reported cholera cases from district health officers in the Accra Metropolis and the Ghana Health Service (GHS), discuss next steps for coordination, receive and discuss comments on a draft National WASH Emergency Preparedness and Response Plan (EPRP).

Contingency plan

Mr Quansah told the meeting that the government had already begun rolling out the short-term plan, which would last from August to November.

This would include a mass media campaign to assist in sensitising the general public and the supply of chlorine tablets to purify contaminated water sources.

He said a wireless message had been sent out to all metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies (MMDAs) to monitor and sensitise hawkers, traders and all who handled food and play the lead role in ensuring proper sanitation.

War on cholera 

My second exclusive story on the outbreak after 128 people had succumbed to its devastating effects, which was titled “Govt declares war on cholera”, was published on September 23, 2014.

In the report, I indicated that the government had declared war on cholera to stop its rapid spread across the country, and also that the war entailed using a “Sword and Shield” strategy, with the sword representing the targets or communities affected and the shield showing the responses to fight the outbreak.

Components of the strategy – which were already being employed by the Democratic Republic of Congo, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Niger and Chad – included early and targeted WASH emergency response to first suspicious cases in affected areas.

Others were responses based on preparedness, case mapping, population and practices at risk, WASH emergency response, at risk but not yet affected areas, and sustainable WASH intervention in priority areas outside the outbreak period.

According to the Chairman of the working group, Mr Quansah, then a Programme Officer of the Environmental Health and Sanitation Directorate (EHSD) of the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development, the declaration made during the second meeting of the WinE Technical Working Group since the outbreak of the disease in June that year, had become necessary, because although the interventions that had been put in place were progressing steadily, they had not been enough to stop the disease from spreading rapidly.

He said the cholera outbreak was the severest in three decades and needed every workable approach to deal with it and should be seen as a war.

As of September 14, that year - 2014, eight out of the country’s 10 regions had reported a total of 16,527 cases of cholera and recorded 128 deaths with a case fatality ratio of 0.8 per cent, a Public Health Specialist of the Ghana Health Service, Dr Emmanuel K. Dzotsi, told the meeting.