The Deputy Minister-designate for Health, Dr Bernard Oko Boye, has urged the use of persons, who have been healed of the deadly Coronavirus disease to fight the stigma it has occasioned.
In the view of Dr Boye, Member of Parliament for the Ledzokuku Constituency, doing this would let people know that the Coronavirus disease, code named Covid-19, is not a death sentence.
Appearing before the Appointments Committee of Parliament in Accra, yesterday, following his nomination by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo as a Deputy Health Minister, Dr Boye, urged Covid-19 survivors to volunteer themselves for media interviews to dispel the stigma that has come with the deadly respiratory disease.
He said “For stigma, education is the right thing that takes it away. So we must continuously tell people how it comes about.
“We have to find ways to use some of our recovered people and encourage them to start having one-to-one discussion by way of TV and radio interviews for people to see that of course people have recovered.”
Dr Boye explained that “this is not a disease of vice. [Diseases of vice are conditions you get when you engage in vices like HIV AIDS.] With Covid-19 anyone could get it. It is like flu so we must continue with the education,” he said.
There have reports of stigmatization against some persons whose relatives have been diagnosed of Covid-19.
“No one comes to our shop to buy anything anymore and as a result of that my father asked my grandmother to close the shop.
“When people see anybody from this house, they run away and sometimes mock you,” a teenager is quoted by newsportal myjoyonline as saying.
But, Dr Boye said there should be no cause for alarm because the disease is curable.
According to him, people thought that Covid-19 was a death sentence and ran away from it because there was little education on it.
“That is why we must continue and enhance public education on the virus and it’s transmission modes.”
Dr Boye said people must not be alarmed because the disease has a low fatality rate compared to other viruses, urging them to promptly report to any health facility for medical attention than keeping it at home for fear of stigmatization.
Ghana’s Covid-19 case count as at yesterday was 636 with eight deaths.
With nearly two million infections worldwide, over 125,000 have lost their lives to the disease, which was first recorded in Wuhan, Wubei Province, China, on December 31, 2019.
BY JULIUS YAO PETETSI