Dr. Winfred Ofosu, acting Upper West Regional Director of Health Service, has announced that the region recorded a total of 203 suspected meningitis cases with 17 deaths in 2015, giving a case fatality rate of 8.4 per cent.

He said the Region registered 192 cases with 19 deaths, giving a case fatality of 9.9 per cent in 2014.

“We are currently diagnosing and treating cases of meningitis and for us this is not unexpected at this particular time. Public education is ongoing and surveillance is enhanced for early reporting and treatment,” he said.

Dr. Ofosu was addressing the 2015 Annual Health Sector Performance Review Conference held in Wa.

It was on the theme: “The status of emergency care services in the Upper West Region: Successes, challenges and the way forward”.

He gave the assurance that there were adequate medicines and logistics in stock for treatment.

On rabies, Dr. Ofosu said the Region recorded nine human rabies cases in 2015 as against six reported cases in 2014 with all the patients dying, giving a 100 per cent case fatality.

“We cannot continue to allow this to happen. We need collaborative effort to ensure all rabid animals are vaccinated to curb increasing deaths from this preventable fatal disease,” he pointed out.

Dr. Ofosu said the regional directorate has embark on a drive to ensure a healthy population and significant reduction in avoidable deaths, strengthen management of increasing numbers of staff for better productivity, and also strengthen cooperation with partners and stakeholders to leverage the needed resources for service delivery.

“We want to improve institutional care especially in the area of emergency preparedness and response. We also want to improve access to underserved areas of the Region, particularly the Wa East, Sissala East and West and Wa West,” Dr. Ofosu said.

On the Zika virus disease, he said the regional directorate was mounting surveillance to identify and investigate “this emerging disease and there is no need to panic but we must remain vigilant to notice and report unusual health events to the health system”.