Former Minister of Health, Alex Segbefia, has expressed his dissatisfaction towards Government’s response to the current pandemic, Coronavirus.
In an interview on the Happy Morning Show aired on Happy 98.9FM, he explained: ‘Some steps have been taken. With this current Government, sometimes, we believe that the problem is not about things not being done, but how they are done. In this case, we think they were quite slow to react to some of the issues some of us had raised”.
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He commented that the current Government had the advantage of dealing with the prevention of Coronavirus quickly because the previous Government had laid the foundation as it had already created the infrastructure that it used to prevent the Ebola disease. He also added that few people were trained on how to use protective clothing in fighting Ebola and as such the training could continue to fight Coronavirus.
He posited that the first step to be taken is education. “People have to be informed. People should have a sense of urgency but not one of panic. For example, having buckets in school to wash hands, adverts on television to talk about how to wash your hands and keep clean. Also, checking up on other hygienic behavior patterns should all be part of jingles and adverts”.
Even though, he was of the view that some positive measures had been taken by the Government to alienate fears and prevent an outbreak of the disease in the country, “I [he] feel that it should have been done 3-4 weeks earlier or from the time we heard the case in China”.
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On Wednesday, March 11, 2020, President Akufo-Addo addressed the nation on enhanced measures taken by the Government to prevent the outbreak of Coronavirus. In his address, he commended Ghanaians on heeding to the directive to avoid hand-shaking. He also disclosed that 100 million dollars has been allocated for a response plan to Coronavirus.
By: Alberta Dorcas N D Armah