UPPER EAST MARKS DAY FOR DISASTER REDUCTION (PAGE 21, OCT 17)

The 2008 HIV sentinel survey indicates that the Upper East Region has an HIV prevalence of two per cent compared to the national prevalence of 1.7 per cent.
The study also shows that the Navrongo sentinel site has the highest HIV prevalence of 2.8 in the region.
The Deputy Upper East Regional Director of the Ghana Health Service in charge of Administration, Mr Lucio Dery, disclosed this at a regional celebration to mark this year’s international Day for Disaster Reduction at Bolgatanga.
The theme for the celebration, which was organised by Action Aid Ghana, was “hospitals safe from disasters”.
Apart from issues of fortifying physical infrastructure of the health facilities at local, district, regional and national levels, it also brought to the fore the question of how people handled and attended to those affected by disasters in health facilities.
Mr Dery announced that since 2006, diarrhoeal cases in the Upper East Region continued to increase from 7,910 to 15,077 in 2008, adding that as of June 2009, 9,688 cases had already been recorded.
He indicated that for the same period the CSM death toll trend was also on the ascendency with 36 deaths in 2008 rising from 22 in 2006, adding that as of June 2009 as many as 18 deaths had already been recorded.
Neoanatal deaths, which are deaths within 28 days of birth due to varying causes, including maternal and environmental factors, he said, were also unacceptably high in the region.
Another worrying phenomenon, Mr Dery noted, was the fact that for the past three years and beyond, road traffic accidents were among the top ten causes of hospital attendance and admissions in the region.
The implication of this was that “both our precarious human resource situation and the hospital facilities are overstretched and this gives rise to some unavoidable deaths and other adverse events,” the Deputy Director explained.
Mr Dery stressed that hospitals could be made safe from disasters if “we collectively keep our region free from poor sanitation practices leading to flood and disease prevention and control”.
Mr Dery said that one other way of curbing disasters in hospitals in the region was a collective effort to increase the number of doctors, midwives, nurses, and laboratory technologists through the setting up of a Regional Health Development Fund to sponsor and bond them to serve the region for a minimum time period.
The Upper East Regional Development Programme Manager of Action Aid Ghana, Mr Micheal Lumor, said his organisation believed that even though disasters brought pain and hardship, they also brought alongside opportunities for affected persons to begin to think and take collective actions to make them less vulnerable to disasters.
He called on the government and its institutions to look back and reflect on their overall role in addressing the root causes of disasters and help save lives.
The Upper East Regional Minister, Mr Mark Woyongo, observed that disaster reduction was a shared responsibility, and that it behoved all to contribute positively to nip the canker in the bud for the region to flourish and become prosperous.