We must prepare adequately for disasters

THE Deputy Minister of the Interior, Dr Kwasi Apea-Kubi, has called for disaster preparedness at all levels of society in order to survive the impact of such occurrences.
He said preparedness involved knowing the hazards that the people lived in, their period of occurrence, impacts and how to reduce their effects when they do occur.
Delivering the keynote address at a two-day workshop on Disaster Response Contingency Planning for Ghana in Accra,he said in Ghana, there was the incidence of perennial flooding, windstorms, fire outbreaks, epidemic disease outbreaks such as the recent outbreak of the H1N1 influenza.
The workshop, which is a collaborating effort among the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO), the United Nations Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs and the World Food Programme, is to review the 2008 National Contingency for Ghana to make it relevant to the present day disaster situation.
Participants were from agencies within the UN Systems in Ghana, the Ghana Armed Forces, the Ghana Police Service, the Ghana National Fire Service, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Ghana Health Service, Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) and non-governmental organisations (NGOs).
Addressing participants, Dr Apea-Kubi pointed out that the World Disaster Report for 2009 indicated that disasters were on the increase, as well as its impact.
He said over the past 10 years, the world had suffered increasing numbers of natural disasters, affecting more than 2.5 billion, killing one million and causing economic losses of approximately US$700 billion.
Coming home to Ghana, the deputy minister said in 2007,??Northern Ghana floods???, 49 lives were lost, 16,657 homes in more than 500 communities were affected, adding that about 307,127 people were displaced by the floods.
For his part, the Resident Co-ordinator of the WFP, Mr Ismail Omer, said threats of floods were among the many challenges confronting humanity today.
“Both rapid and slow hazards, ranging from personal injury to damage to property and infrastructure have large-scale impacts on the society, economic development and the environment”, he pointed out.
He touched on perennial flooding incidence in Ghana and pointed out that it required a holistic framework that would guide the collective action of all partners.
“Several floods experienced in 2007 and subsequent occurrences in years that followed can only serve as a reminder for this necessity”, Dr Omer stressed.

Caption: (From left) The National Co-ordinator of NADMO, Mr Kofi Portuphy, Dr Cecilia Bentsi, Chairperson of NADMO Relief and Reconstruction Technical Committee and on the right, in the is the Deputy Minister of the Interior, Dr Kwasi Apea-Kubi and on the right is Dr Ismail Omer of the WFP.