‘Stay away from bush meat’
As part of efforts to shield Ghanaians from the deadly Ebola disease, people are being reminded to stay away from consuming bush meat, particularly in the rural areas where the practice is very common.
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According to the Vector Control Officer of Zoomlion Ghana Limited, Mr Abdulai Abdul Aziz Yelsuma, the virus that transmits the Ebola disease is found in animals in the wild, especially antelopes, fruit bats, monkeys and porcupines.
He explained that the animals, by their nature were more resistant to the virus than human beings and so this made them more likely to harbour the virus.
Mr Yelsuma gave the advice at a forum held at the Tamale Training College to educate students on the disease and encourage them to ensure that the environment they lived in was clean at all times.
Before the forum began, Zoomlion sprayed various communities in Tamale with the aim of ridding the environment of pests and harmful insects.
According to Mr Yelsuma, ever since the outbreak of the Ebola disease in 1976, it had caused quite a sizeable number of fatalities. He said it was a worrying situation that till date no vaccine or drug to cure the disease had been found.
He mentioned some of the symptoms of the disease as fever, sore throat, diarrhoea, rashes, impaired kidney, internal and external bleeding, and urged the public to not waste time in reporting to the nearest health centre if they should experience any of the signs.
He assured the public that the company would soon embark on a mass spraying exercise across the region to help reduce the incidence of mosquito bites, and for that matter malaria.
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The Northern Sector Communications Officer of Zoomlion, Mr Francis Atayure Abirigo, said about 3.5 million people in Ghana contracted malaria annually and that approximately 20,000 children under five died from the disease.
“Malaria alone takes up about one to two per cent of Ghana’s total Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
He partly blamed the rising spate of malaria cases in the region on people who failed to take precautionary measures to keep the disease away in spite huge expenditures incurred by the government and other stakeholders to stem its spread.