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ACCRA. — Ghana’s legislators on Wednesday unanimously asked health authorities to call for a national stakeholder discussion on ways of preventing the outbreak of ebola fever in the country. The chairman of the committee on health, Joseph Yilleh Chireh, who first raised the alarm on the floor of parliament, said there was need for an urgent meeting between the health sector and the National Security to fashion out measures to prevent the acute haemorrhagic fever disease from penetrating the borders of Ghana.

The call came after reports of a wave of fatal outbreaks of the disease in neighbouring Guinea and Liberia, where health workers are struggling to contain the virus since Monday.

“Further, I recommend that an inter-agency taskforce be set up, consisting of relevant institutions under these three ministries and the National Security. We must not wait until the disease gets here before we act! The time to act is now,” the Wa West Member of Parliament urged.

The MP, who was once a Minister of Health under the late president John Evans Atta Mills-led government, also called upon the Ministry of Health, through the Public Health Division of the Ghana Health Service, to monitor and regularly update the “Inter-agency Taskforce on reports from particularly the entry points and border areas.” — Xinhua.