88,000 Schoolchildren educated on dog bites, rabies prevention in Bono

A Total of 88,000 schoolchildren from the Bono Region have been trained on dog bites, rabies prevention and management.

Trained under the basic schools' rabies prevention education campaign, the beneficiaries were drawn from 250 basic schools in 10 districts of the region.

This came to light at the Bono Regional Basic Schools Rabies Prevention Education Campaign community durbar at Wamfie in the Dormaa East District in the region last Thursday.

It was organised by the Communication Initiatives for Change (CIC), in partnership with the Ghana Education Service (GES) School Health Education Programme (SHEP), Ghana Health Service (GHS) and Veterinary Services Department (VSD), to reduce rabies cases in the region.

Sponsored by Boehringer Ingelheim (BI), a French Pharmaceutical Company, the programme also benefited teachers, parents and schools’ host community members.

Deaths

At the durbar, the Bono Regional Director of the Veterinary Services, Dr Donald Joachim Darko, disclosed that eight people died of rabies in the region in 2022 as compared to six deaths in 2023.

He explained that the deaths were recorded at the Sunyani Teaching Hospital alone.

Dr Darko expressed concern about the rampant roaming of unvaccinated pets, particularly dogs and cats, in communities.

He said the public had shown little commitment to vaccinating their dogs. That attitude, he said, might affect the national target to eliminate rabies by 2030.

Quoting some statistics, Mr Darko said in 2022, 3,606 pets were vaccinated in the region as compared to 4,390 vaccinations in 2023.

He said as of the fourth quarter of this year, a total of 3,465 pets had been vaccinated.

Court order

The Dormaa East District Environmental Health Officer, Godfred Boahen, said the assembly was processing a document to secure a court order to kill all roaming dogs in communities.

He said rabies issues were always discussed during meetings of the assembly, thus demonstrating its commitment to end the virus in the area.

For his part, the Executive Director of CIC, Emmanuel Fiagbey, urged schools to collaborate with the GES, VSD and GHS to sustain rabies prevention education activities in schools in order to maintain efforts to prevent the threat of the virus.

He said sustaining the effort could contribute to the achievement of the global goal of "zero death from rabies by 2030".

The Sunyani Municipal Director of Education, Mark Godfred Domah, thanked CIC for sponsoring the training of the schoolchildren.

He appealed for additional support to extend the training to cover the Berekum West Municipality and the Banda District.

Earlier, the schoolchildren embarked on a float on the principal streets of Wamfie to create awareness of the campaign.

Writer's email: biiya.ali@graphic.com.gh