Management of Action Aid-Ghana, on Thursday called on Government to commit itself to building the resilience of communities to disasters by strengthening the capacity and resistance of health facilities and systems. "This would not only protect the lives of patients and health workers during and after disasters but also help reduce child mortality, improve maternal health and combat communicable diseases," Ms Christiana Amarchey, Programme Manager of Upper East Regional branch of Action Aid said. Ms Amarchey made the call at a durbar organized by Management of Action Aid in Bolgatanga to mark “International Day for Disaster Reduction”. It was on the theme, "Hospitals Safe From Disasters". She noted that important infrastructure including schools and hospitals were usually not spared during disasters and could be wiped out or rendered non-functional as it happened in the 2007 flood when 37 health facilities in the Region were destroyed. Ms Amarchey said the Government of Ghana was among 168 Governments that pledged to build the resilience of its citizens on disaster risks at the 2005 World Conference on Disaster Reduction in Japan and since then, policy makers and political leaders had several times expressed commitment to see to a substantial reduction in risks of disasters. "However, we are yet to see significant progress being made at addressing these issues, not much can be observed of macro policy on disaster risk reduction being translated through pragmatic programming into building communities' resilience to disasters at the scale required to address the size of the problems," she said. Ms Amarchey noted that even though the country had established a national platform to work towards making disaster risk reduction a national priority, the appropriate legal framework and financing that would underpin the work of institutions mandated to lead on disaster risk reduction had not been instituted. She therefore appealed to Parliament to study and pass the National Emergency Management Service Bill of 2006 and a proposal for amendment to Act 517 to back the formation of a national platform. Mr Alhassan Samari, Upper East Regional Minister, in a speech read on his behalf by Mr Megida Kassim, Public Relation Officer of Upper East Regional Coordinating Council (UERCC), said government had realized that the battle against disasters required more effort. He said permanent structures for disaster management would be instituted to ensure efficient and speedy response when disaster occurred. Mr Samari commended management of Action Aid for their hard work in the Region and pledged the support of UERCC at all activities that would ensure reduction in disaster risks. Mr Gaston Bozie, Upper East Regional Health Promotion Officer, announced that for the past three years, the Region had not recorded cases of poliomyelitis, nor deaths from measles, outbreak of Cerebro Spinal Meningitis (CSM) and cholera since 1997. He called on parents to ensure that they report to health facilities to vaccinate their children against diseases. The durbar attracted many pupils participating in the “Disaster Reduction Through School” project being implemented by management of Action Aid to reduce people's vulnerability to natural disasters by contributing towards the implementation of the Hyogo Framework for action (HFA). Mr Sulemana Alhassan, Senior Programme Officer of Action Aid, explained that the pupils were involved, to make those in high-risk disaster areas safer, enabling them to act as a focus for disaster risk reduction and institutionalize implementation of HFA within the education system. He said the pupils were encouraged to grow trees and in some cases, parents assisted the pupils to take care of their trees. The best tree growing schools were given prizes. Source: GNA