Ghana today joins the international community to raise the profile of disaster risk reduction on the occasion of World Disaster Reduction Day. The chief aim is to encourage every citizen and push all governments to scale up efforts to build more resilient communities and nations. This year’s World Disaster Reduction Day is being celebrated at a time disaster rates around the globe are climbing. The starkest toll in all these instances are human beings.
In Ghana , the latest disaster is the landslide which occurred yesterday in the Adukrom area killing two women and a three year old boy. In the preceding weeks, fires had gutted two markets in Accra leaving in their wake an incredible level of destruction and emotional wrecks in the case of the victims.
The market fires and Adukrom landslide highlight the urgent need to reduce to the barest minimum disaster risk and vulnerability to natural and human induced disasters. Well before the market fires occurred, the Ghana Fire Service had been very practical and bold in inspecting fire safety standards in workplaces and closing down establishments and which failed to meet the mark.
Unfortunately, this move hit a snag and the fire to sustain this highly laudable preventive initiative was extinguished. Consequently the Fire Service found itself enveloped again in its ambulance image waiting until disaster struck again at Kantamanto and Agbogbloshie Yam Market before responding to the situation.
Meanwhile, the seismic threats to communities around Weija, Kasoa and parts of Accra refuse to recede. Indeed we do not have the luxury of time to wait for an earthquake to strike before we do what needs to be done timeously to safeguard lives, property and our modest level of economic development.
This makes it imperative for the National Disaster Management Organization, (NADMO) and other agencies to be resourced adequately to wage a vigorous and sustainable educational campaign especially in the disaster prone areas. Starving NADMO of the needed financial and logistical oxygen to step up its disaster prevention campaign would cost the nation dearly.
Whether we like it or not, disasters happen when they should. The goal should therefore ensure that natural disasters have a little destructive impact as possible on human lives, livelihoods and development. The greater goal is building a nation where everyone would work towards preventable disaster losses caused by road accidents, fore outbreaks and others too familiar to mention.
This year, World Disaster Reduction Day focuses on making hospitals and health facilities safe from disaster. Indeed, all disasters are health related. And damage to health systems affects nations as a whole. We therefore demand measures that would offer better protection to patients and health workers, including ensuring structural resilience of health facilities.
Although our workers are better off now in terms of remuneration, we need to improve their risk reduction capacity, bearing in mind that when health services and hospitals fail due to disaster people die and suffer needlessly.
With about two months left for Election 2008, we need no one to remind us that a very dangerous human induced disaster in the form of political violence looms large. Victims of violence as always do not fit any political profile. So whether NPP, NDC, CPP, PNC or GCPP, everyone is at risk.
On the occasion of World Disaster Reduction Day, Ghanaians of political persuasion, social background ethnic make-up and religious orientation should resolve never to act in a manner which will plunge the nation into violence.
For an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure.
