The Upper East Regional Health Directorate has said it has not lost sight of the fact that Northern Ghana would soon be thrust into the period when Cerebrospinal Meningitis (CSM) could be rife. As such, clinicians in all 15 Districts and Municipalities have been trained in the proper handling and treatment of the disease.
District Hospitals have also been stocked with drugs used in the treatment of the disease. This came to light when the Deputy Director of the Deputy Upper East Regional Director of Health Services, Dr. Josephat Nyuzaghl spoke on A1 Radio’s Day Break Upper East.
“Learning from the lessons from the Upper West Region, we have not lost sight of the fact that we are in the meningitis season. Last week, we actually trained all our clinicians across the 15 districts basically with the capacity to test and also take the needed sample for us to monitor them. Across our district hospitals, we have the medication that is required to treat the disease”.
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“What we are encouraging all the districts is to step up awareness creation because early reporting is critical as far as diagnosis and outcomes are concerned. This is so that community members who feel unwell can recognize the symptoms and present themselves early to the health facilities,” he said.
CSM is a respiratory and contagious disease. Clinical CSM disease was first described by Vieusseux in 1805 in Geneva, Switzerland while the causative agent, Neisseria meningitidis was identified by Austrian bacteriologist Anton Weichselbaum in 1887. Since then, the disease has occurred in epidemic proportions in other parts of the world including China, Vietnam, Mongolia, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, Europe and the Americas. The first report of a meningitis epidemic in Africa occurred in 1840. African epidemics thereafter became much more common in the 20th century in the African meningitis belt.
A1radioonline.com|101.1MHZ|Mark Kwasi Ahumah Smith| Ghana|
