Government working to deal with CSM outbreak up north – Health Minister

The Minister of Health, Kwaku Agyeman Manu says the government is working with experts to deal with the outbreak of cerebrospinal meningitis (CSM) in the five regions of the north. He said public education has been intensified in the affected areas while stakeholders are being engaged to help curb the disease.

The Minority Chief Whip and Member of Parliament for Asawasi constituency, Muntaka Mubarak criticised the Health Ministry for not paying much attention to CSM which has claimed more lives than COVID-19 but speaking on the floor of Parliament, Kwaku Agyeman Manu said combatting the disease is a priority for the government.

“We are working on how to stop the CSM and we are chasing the bacterial like how we are chasing COVID-19. We are doing education, sensitization, community engagement and all that can be done. We are even doing social distancing with the CSM,” he said.

He added that, “we are doing education, we are doing sensitization, we are doing community engagements all that can be done. The social distancing that we are talking about for COVID, we are still talking social distancing for meningitis and there are teams that are going around trying to educate and sensitize such that people won’t get closer to each other.”

As of the 15th April 2020, a total of 258 cases have been reported in Upper West out of the 409 cases reported in the 5 regions of the north, resulting in 40 deaths. The Ghana Health Service says that even though there is no vaccine for this strain causing the outbreak, there is an effective treatment upon early reporting and initiation of the said treatment. This can “significantly improve outcome and improve survival rate”.