Public food sales banned as cholera strikes Kumasi

Ghana’s second largest city, Kumasi, has banned the sale of cooked food and iced water by street vendors in a bid to halt the spread of cholera, media sources told IRIN on Tuesday. “Food can only be sold after the Food and Drugs Board and the Ghana Standards Board have certified them,” one source at the Ghana News Agency (GNA) said. Ghana’s health ministry, the local government authorities of Kumasi and those of the region of which it is the capital, Ashanti, imposed the ban on Monday after two people died of cholera and 41 were hospitalised at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital, GNA said. Ashanti Regional Minister Kojo Yanka said the situation had reached “an alarming proportion”. The outbreak is being blamed on poor public hygiene and contaminated food in the city of over 400,000 persons, whose director of health, Dr. Agatha Bonney, said the department recorded 21 cases cholera and seven deaths caused by contaminated water in July. This time around, a shortage of garbage trucks has been identified as a contributing factor to the spread of the disease. Six trucks have now been sent to increase Kumasi’s refuse collection fleet. In a further move to improve sanitary conditions, Deputy Minister of Health Nana Acheampong said that by next year all bucket latrines will have been phased out and home owners will be required to install flush toilets. Kumasi’s Komfo Anokye hospital, the largest in northern Ghana, ran out of intravenous fluids because of the cholera caseload, GNA said quoting the Regional Director of Health Services, Ebeneza Appiah-Denkyirah. It also reported Acheampong as saying that the ministry was taking more infusions to the institution.