As a measure to reduce the spread of COVID-19 among health workers, the Director-General of the Ghana Health Service, Dr. Kuma-Aboagye says the Service has intensified training on infections prevention and control for all of its staff.
He made this known during a press briefing by the Information Ministry on Tuesday, May 26.
“Once you are exposed, you have protocols from trying to do the quarantine as we do for everybody. If we find a case here, some who have been quarantined, we’d have to retest them to see if they are exposed. But we’ve intensified the training on infection prevention and control across the facilities especially outside the treatment centres where they are more careful and employ all to abide by these principles. We are also further training our mortuary workers and other workers who are likely to come close to this. We needed to mitigate this matter so it’s something that is very clear and we appreciate that it’s a risk and that is why a lot of effort is being made to protect our health workers,” he said.
Dr. Kuma-Aboagye had earlier disclosed that the Ghana Health Service has begun evaluating why a lot more health workers are testing positive for COVID-19 in the country.
He noted that although the health workers are categorized as being at high risk, it is possible some may have contracted the disease within their communities, and not the health facilities.
“Apart from being at high risk of being infected at work, health workers are also part of our community so they could also pick it up just like any other person so we are evaluating all that. We have an insurance package for those that are infected so it is important that we track them. So we are doing further investigations to also look at what is going on. The most important thing is we have some health workers that are affected and that is why the numbers are going up. It’s a cumulative figure that continues to add up. It’s not like these are new cases that have come up. It’s not all the time that they go to isolation or treatment centres to get infected. A case may just pop up and infect the worker,” he remarked.
Health workers have consistently complained about inadequate Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) which heightens their risk of infections in their line of duty.
Last week, for instance, the Western Region reportedly had 43 health workers testing positive; while the Eastern and Ashanti Regions have recorded 15 and 30 cases respectively.
