The bodies of more than 20 persons who died from COVID-19 in the Sunyani in the Sunyani Municipality are yet to be buried due to lack of Personal Protective Equipment (PPEs) to facilitate their burial, Municipal Environmental Health Analyst (EHA), Daniel Owusu Korkor, has disclosed.
“We don’t have the EPPs, especially the coverall, how do you expect us to bur COVID-19 dead bodies without them”, he stated.
He was speaking during the Graphic Communications Group Limited (GCGL) and Zoomlion Ghana Limited stakeholders Sanitation Dialogue in Sunyani in the Bono Region.
Mr. Korkor said the municipality started recording COVID-19 deaths in November 2020 and so far, 16 bodies had been buried since January 2021.
“After the first burial in January 2021, the Sunyani Municipal Assembly’s EHA Department has not been able to carry out any more burials due to the lack of PPE,” he indicated.
Not long ago, National President for the Environmental Health Officers Alliance Ghana (EHOAG) Yaw Akwaa Lartey has threatened his members will suspend burying of all covid-19 victim dead bodies in the country if government continue refusing to provide their members in various assemblies with the necessary logistics to carry on their duties.
The national president for EHOAG who doubles as the Acting District Environmental Health Officer for Denkyembour district in the Eastern region, Yaw Akwaa Lartey revealed that government has refused to provide them with PPE’s and hearse which will help them carry out their duties safely, fearing that members of the union may be at risk of contacting the dreaded COVID-19 virus.
He alleged that “government is only interested in providing the necessary logistics for ministry of health (nurses and doctors) and leaving us behind, therefore we are not going to risk our lives anymore”.
He further revealed that because there are no hearse available to the members of the union, they are always compelled to rent long KIA trucks or a tricycles when the private hearse owners refuse to carry people suspected to have died from COVID-19, a situation he said poses health risk to the public since the owners refuse their vehicles to be disinfected after using it to convey the bodies to the cemetery and later use them to carry food stuffs to market places.
He noted that under the Health Profession Regulatory Act 2013, there are eighteen bodies regulated by the Allied Health Professional Council which falls under the ministry of health, saying “but for the Environmental Health Officers, we are left out in anything associated with health issues even during covid-19 pandemic” Mr. Lartey lamented.
