Bolgatanga, Dec. 13, GNA - The Upper East Regional Co-ordinating Council has set up a team to monitor the sale and use of agro -chemicals in the Region and check the illicit sale of the products across the borders with Togo and Burkina Faso. The team is made up of stakeholders in health, agriculture, environment, National Disaster Management Organisation and Food and Drugs Board. Mr Mark Owen Woyongo, Regional Minister, made this known in Bolgatanga at the weekend during a tripartite meeting of health personnel from Ghana, Togo and Burkina Faso.

The meeting aimed at putting in place pragmatic measures to combat high maternal and neonatal deaths, HIV and AIDS, Tuberculosis and outbreak of Cerebro Spinal Meningitis (CSM) along the common borders. Mr Woyongo said poverty, low literacy, high morbidity and malnutrition were affecting the three nations, hence the need for innovative and cost effective measures to control and manage outbreak of diseases all- year- round and the promotion of good healthy practices among the people. He thanked the Burkinabe Government for collaborating with Ghana since 2008 in the spillage of the Bagre Dam after the water body had caused a disaster in Ghana in 2007. Mr Woyongo also congratulated Burkina Faso for netting 50 years of independence.

Dr Ernest Opoku, Deputy Regional Director in charge of Clinical Care said the meeting would afford the directorate an opportunity to promote better understanding and common affirmative action on issues that affected health and wealth creation among the three countries. He said Ghana and Burkina Faso had collaborated in sustaining research and surveillance in the control of the Black fly (agent that causes blindness) as well as CSM. Dr Opoku said the three countries also shared information on communicable diseases and engaged in joint national immunisation days among other interventions 13 Dec. 10