Insist customers wash hands before entering beauty salons - GHS

As part of an initiative by the Ghana Health Service (GHS) to sensitise the general public on the Ebola disease, the Professional Cosmetologists and Beauty Therapists Association (PCBTA) has been urged to insist that customers wash their hands before entering beauty salons.

According to the Health Service, salon owners must place basins, veronica containers, and soap at the entrance of their beauty shops to enable customers wash their hands. The GHS made the advice at a seminar on the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) organised for beauticians in Accra early this week, under the theme “Ebola Virus: The role of the beautician and hairdresser."

The seminar was also necessitated by the overwhelming nature of the disease in the affected countries in the West Africa sub-region. Even though Ghana has been spared the outbreak of EVD, since December 2013, the GHS deemed it necessary to protect and prepare citizens, especially hairdressers and barbers, adequately against the disease.

The heath team, led by GHS Head of Public Advocacy, Dr. Ernest Kenu, informed the association that the recent outbreak has been the worst plague in history, since it was discovered in 1976 at Zaire (Congo). He was worried that the fast spread of the disease was aided by some traditional and custom beliefs and practices and free movements across borders of the respective countries.

Ebola mortality, being the highest so far since its discovery, according to him, can be prevented if specific precautions such as personal hygiene and avoiding certain culture practices that can enhance the disease spread are adhered to. Cultural practices such as mourning and preparation of the dead before burial, carrying suspected patients to herbalists and prayer camps for treatment instead of the hospital, among others, must be avoided in Ghana, he pleaded.

Dr. Kenu urged the beauticians not to compromise on their safety measures to avoid coming into contact with the deadly virus. The President of PCBTA and Chief Executive of FC Beauty Clinic, Mr. Grace Amoabeng, thanked the personnel of the GHS for taking time off their busy schedules to interact with the association.

She said the association finds the sensitisation programme very helpful because it opened their eyes and solved doubts in their minds about Ebola. She urged the association members to take the lessons learnt from the seminar seriously to prevent Ebola and other disease outbreaks, wondering, “if a preventable disease like cholera is killing us, then how much more Ebola?”