By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
April 12, 2015
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

When I first read the Ghana News Agency-generated newsstory about bed-bugs having infested the dormitories of Adisadel College in Cape Coast, I could not stop myself from laughing. I knew right away that it was an extremely slow day in the news and editorial offices of the GNA. I also expected one or two relevant administrators of Adisadel to come out shortly and set matters aright. The fact of the matter is that bed-bugs have been a fixture in many a Ghanaian boarding school since anybody can remember. And the problem is not unique, or restricted, to secondary schools. It prevails at all boarding institutions in the country, including our major public higher educational academies.

What makes this issue relevant and worthy of banner headlines in the mainstream Ghanaian media, has to do with the government's apparent inability to coordinatively manage the problem (See "Adisadel College Not Invaded By Bed Bugs - Headmaster" GNA/Ghanaweb.com 4/12/15). And by the latter reference, of course, I am talking about the Ghana Education Service and the latter's political overlord, the Ministry of Education. The Headmaster of Adisadel, Mr. William Kusi Yeboah, is calling on the central government to step in because the cost of fumigating dormitory facilities at the school is becoming prohibitive. He gives the figure of GHC 15,000 as the cost of the latest fumigation exercises conducted at the school by Zoomlion, the transnational sanitation company. Judging by the budgetary history of this termly exercise, according to Mr. Kusi Yeboah, the cost of fumigation is expected to rise even higher in the near future.

For a government that seems to be studiously concerned about keeping the cost of education within the reach of most working parents and/or civil servants, this may necessitate a budgetary set-aside. It is also ironic that President John Dramani Mahama should be traipsing the country promising to build more boarding facilities for community day secondary schools, at the same time that the Ministry of Education does not even have a program in place to deal with such an embarrassingly basic problem as bed-bug infestation of our public schools. Mr. Kusi Yeboah has an effective solution to the problem; and it entails getting rid of all wooden beds in these boarding schools and replacing them with iron and steel bedsteads.

Of course, in the short term, this is bound to cause considerable economic headache. But in the long term, it is bound to save the Ghanaian taxpayer and the Ministry of Education considerable sums of money. It is also bound to remarkably reduce the negative impact of chemical usage on the health of both students and staff of these institutions. We need to also highlight the fact that the situation may be even worse at the middle- or junior-high school level, where wooden bedsteads have been the norm since the mid-19th century. At the Akuapem-Akropong Middle Boys' Boarding School, popularly called Akropong Salem, which yours truly attended in the early to mid-1970s, for instance, the wooden beds had to be brought out into the tropical sunshine annually to be sprayed at the expense of us pupils ourselves. Which, of course, meant that these "housecleaning" exercises were conducted squarely at the expense of our parents. But it was, nevertheless, more than worthwhile, because it was also a well-directed assay at preventive medicine.

Both Zoomlion fumigation officials and Mr. Kusi Yeboah, the Adisadel Headmaster, note that improving personal hygiene among students would go a long way towards drastically reducing the level of bug infestation in our boarding schools. I don't know whether it is still the practice, but while I was a pupil of Akropong Salem, weekly competitive inspections were held by both our school prefects and our housemasters. These inspections were aimed at maintaining high personal and environmental hygiene standards, with pupils in poorly performing dormitories and houses being meted punishments in the form of weeding the school field and cleaning the campus. School authorities may want to revisit this healthy practice and where absent, institute such measures and where lax, tighten up the same.

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