Ebola Alert: Be careful when consuming bush meat

Mr Abdulai Abdul Aziz Yelsuma, Vector Control Officer of Zoomlion Ghana Limited, a waste management company, has cautioned Ghanaians against the excessive consumption of bush meat to avoid contracting the deadly Ebola disease.

He explained that the virus that carries the Ebola disease was mostly found in bush animals especially monkeys, porcupines, antelopes and fruit bats, and stressed that due to their body resistance, the disease could be transferred to humans who come into contact with such animals.

Mr Yelsuma gave the advice in Tamale on Monday at a forum to educate students of the Tamale Training College on some harmful diseases and environmental cleanliness.

The forum preceded a community-to-community spraying exercise scheduled by Zoomlion in the Northern Region to rid the environment of mosquitoes and other insects, so as to improve the lives of the people.

Mr Yelsuma said since the outbreak of the Ebola disease in 1976, it had recorded 90 per cent fatalities, and still had no vaccine or cure, and noted that the country must guard against contracting the disease since it was too deadly.

He indicated that fever, sore throat, diarrhea, rashes, impaired kidney, internal and external bleeding were some of the known symptoms of the Ebola disease, and urged the public not to waste time in reporting such symptoms to the nearest health centres.

He also stressed the need for people to keep their surroundings clean to prevent malaria infections, and assured that the company would soon embark on a mass spraying exercise to kill mosquito larvae across the region to reduce the rate of malaria spread.

Mr Francis Atayure Abirigo, Zoomlion Communications Officer for the Northern Sector, said some 3.5 million people in Ghana contract malaria annually, and that approximately 20,000 children under five die from the disease, saying, “Malaria alone takes one to two percent of Ghana’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

He blamed the increasing rate of malaria cases on the citizenry for failing to take precautionary measures to prevent its infection, despite huge expenditure by government to reduce the disease.