Fighting Coronavirus: Use community enforcement strategy not military – Public Health Advocate

Government has been advised to use community health committees in its enforcement strategy in compelling citizens to comply with the Coronavirus (COVID-19) safety protocols.

A Public Health Advocate, Samuel Arthur who made the call in an interview with Bonohene Baffour Awuah on Ghana Kasa on Kasapa 102.5 FM, advised the government to adopt community health enforcement compliance to stop the spread of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) in the country.

“We must take advantage of community health committee because our nation has numerous financial challenges to deal with. If we say we are bringing out the military among others, it comes with extra cost to the nation. We must task the community health committee to use their expertise in order to make the community alert at all times on the protocols,” he reiterated.

He warned that despite the fact that the nation has some good news with respect to the reduction in Ghana’s coronavirus case counts and fatality rates does not mean the virus is not in the system.

The Ghana Medical Association (GMA) in a statement recently has taken a swipe at the NPP government for the blatant disregard for the COVID-19 protocols during the funeral of its former General Secretary, Kwadwo Owusu-Afriyie aka Sir John held in the Ashanti Region.

However, the Public Health Advocate said opinion leaders such as the Assembly Members, church leaders among others can also be empowered to enforce the adherence of the COVID-19 protocols rather than deploying the military and police personnel on the streets.

“So we have Assembly members, Unit Committees and in every community we have health committees. We must revive the broken down community health committee structure and tasked them to work on getting the public to comply with the safety protocols,” Mr. Arthur stated.