The Executive Director of the Center for Environmental Impact Analysis (CEIA), Samuel Obiri has tasked government to take steps to ensure that periodic health impact assessments are carried out at least every three years in mining communities to know the health status of residents living in such communities.“Government should be able to audit to know what the disease status of residents is. Again we expect CHRAJ and all these independent bodies there to begin to act” Mr. Obiri intimated on Multi TV’s current affairs show, pm:EXPRESS, which discussed the Centre’s research findings in two mining communities in the Western region.The study which was carried out in the Tarkwa-Nsuaem Municipality and Prestea Huni Valley Municipality with the Cape Coast Municipality as a control area involved at least 5,000 respondents who were randomly selected.The report of the study launched last week involved the examination of blood samples of respondents, water and food sources as well as an analysis of hospital records of respondents from the Prestea Huni Valley area, Tarkwa-Nsuaem and Cape Coast Municipalities. The report revealed that in some cases nine out of every 100 children had traces of cancer in their blood.The cancer risk is attributed to the presence of high levels of toxic metallic substances, particularly arsenic in rivers, streams, boreholes and food crops due mainly to the exposure of these substances by the activities of miners - large and small scale alike.The team's analysis also showed that as many as eight adults out of every 100 were likely to be hit by one cancer or the other in their lifetime.Despite the controversy surrounding the report, the Executive Director of the Center for Environmental Impact Analysis says the NGO expects government to act on the report with urgency by stating boldly and categorically if it wants to trade the lives of the over 300,000 inhabitants in those areas with gold to develop other areas of Ghana. Throwing the challenge to government, Samuel Obiri stated that if it is not the case that those inhabitants are insignificant, then government must task the “EPA and other regulatory bodies to be on top of their game and ensure the health of the people”.He stated further that “following the meeting with the ethical committee, they made a very profound emphatic statement that in our environmental regulation, we don’t have a health impact assessment as a component of the environmental impact statement and that is what the Ghana Health Service would wish to be done”. He called on government to begin taking proactive steps in implementing health impact assessment periodically at least every three years.Dr. Clegg Lamptey, the head of the surgical department of the Korle Bu Medical School insisted that is a national issue and requires swift attention if indeed the research finding is true and “I have no reason not to believe it is so” He stressed that the big companies will never own up to these risks and commended the researchers with suggestion that civil society must rise up and demand action by way of pushing the multinationals to do the right thing.