GHS dispatches health personnel to Mile 11

30-04-09

THE Ghana Health Service (GHS) is dispatching health personnel to the New Bortiano (Mile 11) area where dead bodies and body parts have been exposed in mass graves to ensure that people in the area are protected from a possible epidemic.
The Director-General of the GHS, Dr Elias Sory, who made this known to the Daily Graphic yesterday, warned that an epidemic was possible.
He expressed worry over the situation and said environmental health officers, officers from the regional and district health directorates, as well as other relevant institutions, were being prompted to go the area to save the situation.
“We have to be proactive to ensure that the people are safe. In the end, the buck stops with us because when they fall ill they will have to go the hospital,” he said.
Dr Sory said the concerns being expressed by the people in the area were genuine, since there was a high possibility of contamination of water and other food items in the area.
He said as part of the visit to the area, the environmental health officers should be able to determine whether it was suitable to dump unclaimed bodies in the area.
Residents of the Mile 11 area woke up on Monday to a horrific scene and overpowering stench of rotten human parts at the cemetery in the area.
That followed a heavy downpour that exposed the parts of human bodies buried in shallow mass graves at the cemetery.
At the scene, human skulls, teeth and other parts were scattered around, while legs protruded from the graves. Residents feared that the rotten bodies could easily have adverse effects on their lives.
According to them, the mass burial of dead bodies which apparently had not been claimed by the relatives of the deceased was a daily occurrence at the cemetery.
They indicated that it was a common spectacle to see trucks from morgues discharging dead bodies into mass graves at the cemetery.
One resident, Mr Benjamin Asiedu, said the overpowering stench which emanated from the dead bodies often rendered residents uncomfortable and incapable of sleeping well.