Ahanta West MCE to Intensify Access to Health Care

Mr John Agyare, Municipal Chief Executive (MCE) of the Ahanta West Municipal Assembly (AWMA) in the Western Region has hinted that he will intensify the process of getting as many Community Health Planning Service (CHPS) Compounds as possible to ensure that health care was brought to the doorsteps of the people and that health workers also have a decent place of work in the Municipality.

He noted that access to health care was still a challenge for some of the people in the Municipality even though some efforts were already being made to provide CHPS Compounds in some communities, coupled with the fact that some of the CHPS were housed in rented facilities that have not been designed for such services. 

According to him, malaria was still a major cause of OPD attendance in the health facilities which made the Government of Ghana collaborate with donor partners to provide mosquito nets for distribution to the people. 

However, he said some of the people were not willing to receive or use the nets and therefore appealed to all members of the Assembly to support the health staff to get the education on the importance of the nets to the people having in mind that a healthy population is a wealthy one. 

Mr Agyare who gave the hint in an interview with iGOGHANA said it was important to know that the COVID-19 pandemic was not over yet, and so all must continue to observe the safety protocols as a means of fighting the pandemic and expressed the hope that the COVID-19 response team was working hard with their surveillance and vaccination. 

He further encouraged all the Assembly Members, staff of the Assembly and all the residents of the Municipality to get vaccinated when the health officials get to their communities so as to defeat the disease. 

He mentioned the provision of potable water as a major concern in the Municipality and said a good number of the people still lacked access to potable water which was why the Assembly in the past made efforts to provide boreholes in some rural communities.

“It is, however, becoming clear that we cannot rely on Government sources alone to tackle the problems we have in the water sector. For me, we need to sell our District to organizations and institutions in the water sector for support so that we can achieve a complete safe water coverage as early as possible. In the meantime, procurement processes have been completed for the provision of two mechanized boreholes with overhead tanks, one at the Ankyernyin MA Basic School and the other at Upper Dixcove.” 

Touching on sanitation, Mr said the problem with waste management in the Municipality has to do with the increasing waste generation, but the Assembly in collaboration with Zoomlion Ghana Ltd was doing the best possible to contain the situation. 

A major challenge he mentioned, however, was the inadequate number of skip refuse containers and announced that procurement processes have been completed for the procurement of six (6) additional skip containers to serve especially, the Agona-Nkwanta Market and other high waste generating areas. 

“This is the first stem as we intend to provide more of such containers in the not too distant future. My appeal to all of us is to support the efforts of the Assembly and Zoomlion by preventing indiscriminate disposal of waste particularly plastic waste in our communities”, he pointed out.