GCAA asks stakeholders to protect airports from infectious diseases
Director General (D-G) of the Ghana Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA), Mr Simon Allotey, has called for collaborative efforts among stakeholders in air transport to ensure that airports are properly protected to prevent people with infectious diseases from entering into the country.
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“We are convinced that it is now time to take decisive steps to prevent the spread of communicable diseases and other associated sanitation and health issues at the airports that are points of entry,” Mr Allotey said.
He also urged Ghanaians to consider health safety as a national responsibility, bearing in mind that an outbreak of any communicable disease “is just a 12-hour flight away from any country”.
Event
The D-G made the call at a three-day capacity-building programme for health and security personnel at the country’s airports in Accra. It was aimed at equipping the participants with the requisite knowledge of how to easily detect communicable diseases at the various airports. The programme was also meant to assist staff of the airport health unit on the use of a multi-sectoral approach in managing public health events in air transport.
The over 40 participants were drawn mainly from the Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority, Ghana Immigration Service (GIS), Ghana Airport Company Limited (GACL), World Health Organisation (WHO), Port Health Unit of the Ghana Health Service (GHS) and other security agencies.
The training was supported by the WHO and the International Civil Aviation Organisation.
Topics
Participants were taken through topics such as reporting on illnesses, isolation of sick passengers, onboard precautions and methods of screening. Other topics were segregating and
assessment of sick passengers, solid and liquid waste and vector control.
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The rest were health risk detection and notification, event verification, public health response and monitoring and evaluation.
Significance
The Country Representative of WHO Ghana, Dr Owen Laws Kaluwa, said the training was timely since there was the need to prepare personnel to be able to respond promptly to diseases at the various airports in Ghana.
He advised the participants to put the lessons they learnt into practice. “The workshop is expected to assist the authorities in establishing, revising and updating the national or site-specific operational plans and standard operating procedures (SOPs) to manage public health events in air transport,” he said.
In a speech read on his behalf, the D-G of the Ghana Health Service GHS, Dr Anthony Nsiah-Asare, entreated the participants to ensure that they imparted the knowledge gained to their colleagues who were not at the programme.