The Lepers Aid Committee is challenging the Ghana Health Service’s assertion that leprosy has been eradicated from Ghana.
The Service’s report indicates that infections have reduced drastically but the survey conducted by the Lepers Aid Committee in Ghana suggests contrary. According to them, the disease continues to affect people, especially those in the Northern regions.
Esther Geh, a member of the committee, has also bemoaned the lack of funds to run the Weija Leprosarium.
She said even though government supports them through the LEAD program, the amount is woefully inadequate.
“We have a lot of challenges, all of them are on the LEAP programme, right now, the common fund is also giving us some monies for them, but it is still not enough, we have to feed them, we have to take them to the hospitals, and a whole, so right now our major challenge is financial,” she said.
“You don’t often see people here coming to visit them, it’s just a few who have their family members coming to visit them but most of them they live here for years without their family members coming to visit, but one aspect is, when they die, then you see family members coming to claim the body because it is their family,” she laments.
Rabby Bray, a Ghanaian actress, who organized a get together for the persons living with leprosy, indicated that she was motivated to exhibit this gesture due to the neglect they suffer in society. She encouraged the general public to end the stigmatization meted to them.
“I realised that a lot of people do not know about the leprosarium, and even those who know about the existence shun away from them, because they think they are evil, or they are very contagious, and even if someone like this is selling waakye, no one is going to buy, and that is how bad it is in our society, so the only way they can eat is for you and I to visit them,” Bray said after donating assorted food items to the lepers to mark the Christmas occasion.
Source: Ghana/Starrfmonline.com/103.5FM/Josephine Asabea Akonor
