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Coronavirus: Most Ghanaian students in Wuhan don’t want to be evacuated – GHS boss

The Director-General of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), Dr. Patrick Aboagye says government’s decision not to evacuate Ghanaians in China over the outbreak of coronavirus in that city was partly due to the disinterest of majority of the students there to return home.

According to him, the government through intelligence and surveys gathered that most of the students in Wuhan, China, where the outbreak started did not want to be evacuated.

There have been divergent views on the evacuation of Ghanaian students living in Wuhan.

The government announced in February that it was not ready to evacuate the students despite calls by some of the students and their parents that they needed to return to Ghana due to the risk they faced and challenges in accessing basic medical and food supplies. But the government shot down the idea.

Dr. Aboagye said it was not best practice to heed the calls by the students especially because they were getting better care in China than they would if they were evacuated to Ghana.

A former National Organizer of Ghanaian students in China, Daniel Nii Lartey, in an interview on Eyewitness News earlier in February said the Ministry of Health’s decision not to evacuate students in Wuhan may be from a position of ignorance of their true state of desperation and challenges there.

According to him, the donation of money to the students there does not mean much to the students as most grocery stores are locked up and the students are unable to access various other services.

He insisted that evacuating the students will be the best thing to do to safeguard their health and ensure that they are psychologically sound to pursue their studies.

More than 14 countries have evacuated their citizens from Wuhan over the outbreak, adhering to strict World Health Organization protocols for evacuation including holding the evacuees in quarantine for two weeks before reintegrating them into society.

Source:Fiilafmonline/CitiNews

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