The Ghana Health Service (GHS) has dismissed reports suggesting that the country had recorded its first Ebola case in the Northern Region.
In the early hours of Wednesday, June 22, 2022, there was speculations in the mainstream media that a positive case had been confirmed in the Northern Region.
But in an engagement with the media in Accra, the Director-General of the Ghana Health Service, Dr. Patrick Kumah Aboagye described the news as a “untrue.”
“I want to use this opportunity to explain what has happened, we don’t have any Ebola cases in Ghana.
“What I want to say is that I am not aware that we have picked an Ebola case in the Northern Region, but what I can say for a fact is that we were doing a simulation exercise on Ebola virus disease at the Public Health Emergency Management Operation Centre.”
He emphasised that the exercise held in the Northern Region was organised by the service to know the readiness of the system should the country record cases of the Ebola disease.
“Simulation exercises are part of one of the requirements under international health regulations and then all countries are enjoined to regularly do simulation exercises to test their preparedness for such public health emergencies.
“So one of the things that we are doing today is to test the preparedness of public health and the functionality of the public health energy center. And Ebola was one of the things that we were using to test the system, so the scenario that we prayed out at the same point doing the simulation, yes positive cases had to be picked to trigger the kind of response that has to go on the EOC,” Dr. Patrick Kumah explained.
