Takoradi, March 5,- GNA - Mr. Philip Kwesi Nkrumah, Shama-Ahanta East Metropolitan Chief Executive, on Friday said the Metropolitan assembly would start prosecuting people who litter the streets and other public places indiscriminately in a move to keep the area clean at all times. He was launching the Shama-Ahanta East Metropolitan Assembly (SAEMA) two-week sanitation, anti-malaria and tourism campaign in Takoradi. Mr. Nkrumah said people who fail to keep their livestock in pens and allow them to roam the streets in contravention of the assembly's byelaws would similarly face prosecution.

He said the assembly has placed refuse containers at vantage points in some parts of the metropolis but some residents do not use them. Mr. Nkrumah said, the assembly had to hire extra hands to clear the refuse into the containers at extra cost, thereby increasing the assembly's expenditure on sanitation.

He said some parts of the metropolis has been engulfed with filth and that the assembly had to put in extra effort and elicit the people's cooperation to maintain high standard of environmental cleanliness.

Dr. Linda Van-Otoo, Metropolitan Director of Health Services, said malaria continues to be "the number one disease" recorded at out-patient departments of hospitals in the country and many children under five years die of the disease annually.

She said in many cases, parents do not take the children to hospital at the early stages of the disease "until it gets worse and too late" tobe treated.

Dr. Van-Otoo said pregnant women who are attacked by malaria usually give birth to deformed children or have still- births. She said mosquitoes, which cause malaria also cause elephantiasis, swelling of scrotum and breast of women.

Dr Van-Otoo advised the public to observe personal and environmental hygiene to combat mosquitoes and malaria.