Hurray! Our annual cholera is here
For the umpteenth time, we are experiencing cholera in parts of the country.
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Sometimes we laugh to stop us from crying hence, the headline. Cholera has now become an annual ritual that we must tackle on a yearly basis. Yet it is common knowledge that cholera does not happen by chance. It is a result of our actions and inaction.
Recent media reports put the cases reported to health facilities between June and July at almost 578 in the Accra Metropolis with 18 dead. Last year, a similar outbreak in the Kumasi Metropolis reportedly killed 13 people.
As has been the annual ritual with the outbreak, the sector minister responsible for health and his lieutenants and other officials including the mayor of the city will visit a few health facilities and go through the motion of hand washing to teach Ghanaians how to wash our hands. This would be captured on camera by the media and foisted on us as news. They will even spend a few seconds at the bedside of some cholera patients and pretend to share in their plight.
But are they to be blamed? No, because this is how we have handled our cholera outbreaks and this is how we will continue to handle it. After all, we were not born to reinvent the wheel.
The sad aspect though is that ministers and other wealthy families hardly contract cholera. Diseases such as cholera, dysentery, typhoid etc. are most of the time the preserve of the poor. As is usually the case, the affected areas include Teshie, Nungua, James Town, La etc.
The resources spent on treating an avoidable ailment, such as cholera every year and the loss of lives associated with it must make all of us bow down our heads in shame. This is because cholera is a self-inflicted disease that must not feature in our vocabulary in this time and age if we were doing things right. It does not require a rocket scientist to eradicate a disease that is contracted through poor personal hygiene and bad sanitation practices.
Strangely, our leaders keep promising us heaven on earth. As the saying goes, if there was any intention to give you a second dose of a liquor, the first glass would have been filled to the brim. If one cannot even provide you with basics such as a clean environment and good drinking water, then what else can he offer you?
And that is why some of us will continue to see the minister's annual demonstration of hand washing as a political gimmick which at best may be termed as politico-comedy and at worst an insult to our intelligence.
How do we expect that cholera will vanish when our market places where we derive our nourishment from are also the dirtiest of all places on earth with heaps of refuse undisposed for weeks? It is common sight to see flies auto piloting from heaps of refuse to foodstuffs and vice versa.
How do we expect that cholera will be eradicated when it is common knowledge that majority of our people lack decent toilet facilities in their homes and drop it anywhere they fancy in this 21st Century?
How do we wish cholera away when most of our households do not have clean water for domestic use and rely on sources which cannot be trusted?
How do we prevent cholera when most of our water bodies are contaminated with all manner of pollutants including faecal matter?
Is it not the same way we are trying to eradicate malaria by coming out with the best treatment for it while the root cause of tackling an environment that promotes breeding of mosquitoes, stares us in the face?
To continuously tout our country as the gateway to Africa, a tourist hub and an investor’s first choice, and be grappling with an environment that sustains such diseases is akin to putting a covering over one’s anus with plaster to prevent diarrhoea and the consequences thereof are obvious.
It is about time we faced reality and tackled some of these avoidable diseases with pragmatic solutions. Though an attitudinal problem elsewhere, governments are able to galvanise their people to come together to tackle serious national issues and I think we can do it here with leadership and direction.
Failure to do this and come next year by this time, we will be celebrating another cholera outbreak. We cannot be doing things the same way and expect different results.
The writer is Head of Public Relations and Protocol, University of Cape Coast and a senior military officer. Writer’s email: kofikofi1977@hotmail.com