Mamponteng (Ash), Feb. 13, GNA - The Ministry of Health/Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS) ambulance operating in the Kwabre district has since August last year carried out 205 emergency operations to rescue the sick and accident victims in the district.

Mr. Patrick Essien, Kwabre District Fire Officer, who announced this, said 146 of the operations were related to the sick and 59 being road traffic accident victims.

Reporting on the operation of the ambulance since it started operating in the district at the 2004 performance review meeting of the Kwabre district health directorate at Mamponteng last Friday, he said the ambulance staff were working hard and what was left was to equip the ambulance with requisite health facilities to be able to attend adequately to emergency cases.

Mr Essien attributed the various accidents on the two main roads in the district, Kumasi-Mampong and Kumasi-Offinso to drivers flouting traffic regulations and lack of maintenance of vehicles. He stressed the need for all stakeholders to help curb road accidents in the district, saying, the way people treat accident cases when they occur is not helping the district and the victims and it was time this practice was halted.

Dr Kwasi Yeboah-Awudzi, the District Director of Health Services, said the government spends huge sums of money on health and it therefore behoved on all to take good care of their health.

He said there was the need for people to make use of health workers, adding that it is normal for traditional authorities to organise community members and ask health teams to explain health-related issues and policies to them.

He called for more educational programmes in schools and communities in a way to control and also reduce some of the common diseases among children and the aged.

He said diseases like chicken pox and yaws are not common these days and therefore advised hospitals that recorded such cases to be very careful and do something immediately about them.