The Ghana Health Service has rolled out a vaccination exercise to mitigate the spread of cholera in the Central Region.

The vaccination exercise to be carried out in Winneba and Swedru, is expected to last for a week and will be subject to review.

In Winneba about 300 volunteers have been trained to administer the vaccine while 180 volunteers will be working in Swedru.

The Director General of the Ghana Health Service, Professor Samuel Kaba speaking to journalists said in order to engender confidence and ensure mass participation in the exercise, all the health personnel to administer the vaccine were recruited locally.

“One important thing we did consider has to do with security. We don’t want to bring people who are not from the community so all these people are health staff within the community who have been trained so that they can easily be identified, and they will move in a team of three and they will move within the community and make sure that everyone gets vaccinated.”

In order to sustain the efforts being made to combat the disease, the Central Regional Coordinating Council has instituted a monthly clean-up exercise to be held across the region from 1st March.

The Regional Minister, Ekow Panyin announced that the clean-up exercises will be compulsory for all residents of the region and that all sanitation by-laws will be strictly enforced.

“I'm worried, because of the cost involved. This is not coming for free. So we are talking about having skills training for the youth. We are talking about 24-hour economy. All this, we need money, and so if we are going to use money to procure vaccines for, you know, people who are having cholera and other things, I think that that is going to worry us in our developmental agenda.”

“So once we are aware that this comes out of, you know, lack of cleanliness, we need to go back to the COVID period, where we were washing our hands more often. We also have to clean our environment and change our behaviour towards sanitation. I think that’s the best way to go. You agree with me that the best way to stop cholera is to keep our environment very clean and drink healthy water.., and we need you the media to help us to do that in whatever form that you can assist us do this.”