The Country Director for the World Bank, Henry Kerali has advised authorities managing Ghana’s health service to be vigilant in preparedness towards any form of unforeseen epidemic.
Speaking at a development documentary showcased in Accra, last Thursday, the Country Director said, most importantly the country’s health administrative systems needs to be well organized, efficient and avoid any form of complacency.
Mr Kerali further stated that, “our country, Ghana, shouldn’t necessarily be worried about Ebola Outbreak instead we should be watchful”, and the most important thing is to be alert and to always be ready to monitor people traveling in and out of Ghana at points of entry.”
He indicated that there is also a need to collaborate with other countries in order to strengthen the finance to fight these epidemics.
He noted about US$1.6 billion in the Ebola trust fund has been disbursed by the Bank to the affected countries – Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone – , in the fight against Ebola, which occurred in 2015.
He also cautioned that it is when we are careless that these things tend to inflate fast and compound itself.
Ultimately he declared that the world bank developed a coordinating plan for all these countries as this documentary is a regional program that is meant to ensure surveillance for diseases, not only Ebola but any kind of diseases that happen both in humans and animals nevertheless having this system in place and ensuring the readiness to check is important to prevent any future Outbreak.
Documentary
The 52 minute documentary displayed how the efforts of emotional people are changing health services, education, social protection and agriculture to get the better hardship and create the foundations of long life.
Following the documentary it reveals the risk of how childbirth increase significantly, promotion of midwifery program, former president of Sierra Leone expressed.
Also getting children back to school and investing in education, health also indicated how the country is striving to improve in their educational systems and health development issue like that of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, Ghanaians should as well follow these steps as health is a universal issue in the world.
The Bank currently have other programmes such as the disease surveillance, which covers a wider range of countries including Ghana, Nigeria among others. The disease surveillance in other words strengthens the capacity of the countries to be able to monitor and have laboratories that can detect any incoming epidemics.