The Director-General of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), Dr. Patrick Kuma-Aboagye has indicated that the GHS will intensify public education on Covid-19 ahead of the reopening of schools in the coming year.

According to Dr Kuma-Aboagye, in order to prevent a surge in Covid-19 cases when schools fully reopen, it is imperative that public education on the virus is intensified nationwide.

He also added that, “as we did with the SHS 3, and SHS 2 we’re going to give PPEs; not only PPEs, sanitizers etc for schools to prevent any spread. So the team is working to ensure that we have adequate numbers prepared for them when school reopens – not just for the pupils but also for the teachers as was done.”

Dr. Kuma-Aboagye stated that the GHS was also preparing a Covid-19 education package for kids as they prepare to resume next year.

He stated that currently, much of the educational packages prepared by the GHS were adult oriented, and that producing kids oriented educational packages would prevent them from exchanging nose masks among others at school. 

“We are also going to do enhanced education, we are preparing a special package for the younger kids, the lower primary and the rest. Because all our messages are directed towards the adults so we are preparing another message that we hope the media will help us to roll out how we can ensure that these kids get the information they need so that they don’t go to school and say ‘I like your red mask so let’s exchange with mine.” So we need to have a special message also for them on how to adhere to that,” Dr. Kuma-Aboagye said at a presser Thursday evening.

And finally, to ensure that all protocols are strictly adhered to, the GHS has indicated that there will be enhanced surveillance at schools, teacher engagements, as well as linking health facilities to schools to formulate an efficient and quick response framework in the event of any detected case.

“We are working with the [Education Ministry] closely to ensure that we have our facilities linked to their schools and that we have the school health teams visiting and making sure that all cases are picked up quickly.”