Editorial: Millennium city in health crisis

The statistics of the cholera outbreak in Accra is still grim: forty deaths, over 4,000 infections and still counting, is an emergency. Were it to be a weather challenge, it would have been upgraded to another level.

We are even tempted to believe that some interments have been done outside the radar of officialdom, and therefore have not been captured in the overall picture of the cholera deaths.

We continue to walk in the shadow of cholera spun deaths full of justifiable apprehension. It is paradoxical that our attention is more on Ebola than cholera – an immediate predicament testing our ability to manage health emergencies.

We do not for a moment disagree with the ongoing delayed education on Ebola, but dealing simultaneously with the cholera outbreak as the death statistics mounts would make more sense.

The many visits by political appointees under the glare of a plethora of media practitioners won’t alter the picture.

The cholera situation is an indictment on those charged with managing the city’s sanitation, being a disease fuelled by filth. Although residents have a share of the blame, city authorities attract most of it, having failed to ensure an efficient management of the tons of wastes generated in the nation’s capital.

The virtual hopeless cholera situation is analogous to the state of the Cedi, as the authorities stand akimbo, as it were, watching the statistics of death and infection appreciate.

The success or otherwise of the management of cholera by the authorities is an important determinant of how the more serious disease, Ebola, would fare in the hands of the authorities, in the event that it slips through our borders. So far, our prayers have been heard, and we are grateful to the Omnipotent and not dozing politicians at the throttles. Dealing with a dual epidemic would definitely have been beyond our capabilities.

If the cholera outbreak and the failure to stop it in its tracks by the wobbling authorities is a dress rehearsal for a more serious contagion such as Ebola, we are nowhere close to above average.

It is interesting that in the face of the grim reality, Mr. Okoe Vanderpuye continues to tickle himself, hallucinating about a certain nirvana. He was recently patting himself on the back as though his tenure has seen a marked improvement in the sanitation stature of Accra.

He would go down as the man whose tenure witnessed the highest statistics of cholera fatalities and a failed official response to the filth-driven disease.

The Vice President’s lone vote of confidence for Okoe’s performance appears to have gotten into the latter’s head, blinding his sight to the choked gutters and fly-infested garbage mounds now taking over Accra’s skyline.

Mr. Amissah-Arthur’s sanitation management standards do not include the clearance of garbage mounds and how this suppresses filth-borne diseases such as cholera.