The Ghana Environmental Health Officers Association (GEHOA) has launched its humanitarian community based response strategy to the COVID-19 pandemic with a call on Ghanaians to maintain good hygiene and sanitation practices.
Dubbed, “GEHOA COVID-19 National Hygiene Promotion Initiative”, the strategy is aimed at intensifying hygiene education as well as measure the output of the various activities being implemented by relevant stakeholders.
It is underpinned by ten pillars which include dissemination of factual information on COVID-19, promotion of effective hand hygiene, strict observance of social and physical distancing as well as ensuring coughing and sneezing etiquette among the general public.
In all, a target of 200,000 houses in communities across the country had been targeted for sensitization using megaphones and public address systems.
Community Public Address Systems (CoMPAS) would mainly be used in public places such as lorry parks, market centers, landing beaches among others to disseminate information to the general public on the COVID-19.
Mr Paul Kwesi Nutsugah Jnr, President of GEHOA said the idea was to embark on a massive public engagement on COVID – 19 as part of the Association’s responsibility as the mouthpiece of environmental health practitioners in the country.
He said over 70 percent of Out Patients Department attendance to health facilities in the country was as a result of poor sanitation and hygiene practices.
According to him, the educational campaign was necessary because improved environmental health and sanitation practices remained the surest way of minimising the spread of COVID -19.
Members of GEHOA had been involved in both preparedness and response teams created by policy directives within their various area of jurisdiction.
On the implementation approach, Mr Nutsugah mentioned that environmental health officers would be used as the main facilitators at the community level.
Mr Nutsugah mentioned that the initiative would comply with all directives from the Ministry of Health (MoH) and in some instances pre- recorded jingles of the MoH would strictly be used to ensure consistency in the messages.
He added that an online application had also been developed for use as a data entry tool after the intervention in addition to stickers that would be paste on entrance of houses after the sensitization.
He said apart from COVID-19 which had become topical, other diseases such as Cerebrospinal meningitis, Malaria, Poliomyelitis, Cholera and other communicable diseases also remained a threat to the survival mankind.
Mr Kwamena Duncan, Central Regional Minister said there was low investment on Environmental Health and Sanitation Management in the various MMDAs which he said was a contributing factor to the high disease burden in the country.
He suggested that the executives of the Association engaged in advocacy with institutions like the Conference of Metropolitan, Municipal and District Chief Executives and National Association of Local Government Authorities, Sector Ministries and Regional Co ordinating Councils to attract the required investments to be made at the decentralised level.
He commended the executives for rising to the call to action and admonished them to unite all practitioners to provide a formidable force to deal with the challenges affecting Environmental Health and Sanitation Management in Ghana.
For her part, the Paramount Queen Mother of Anomabu Traditional Area, Nana Mbroba Dabo I called on traditional authorities to support the initiatives to ensure that the pandemic was brought under control within the shortest possible time.
