The health of residents at Banvim Dohini in the Tamale South constituency is under serious threat by the road linking the community to the Tamale Township.
The residents say their lives are under serious danger if authorities of the Tamale metropolitan assembly do not intervene immediately.
The whole community according to some residents is now vulnerable to respiratory infections. The dust emanating from the feeder road in the area according to them has the tendency of causing epidemic in the community.
Asthmatic patients, the community members say, dare not venture into the community because it could spark off their health conditions.
Health experts say the community risks contracting ”sinusitis” if immediate measures are not put in place by both assembly and the public health directorate of the Ghana health service. A “sinus” is a bone behind human face with some hollow spaces, filled with air, which leads to the nose cavity.
The community members say, they have already started experiencing breathing difficulties because the community has been inundated with dust coupled with the strong harmattan. ’’It is dangerous for both pedestrians and motorists to be on the road after a vehicle passes on it,’’ a resident told Zaa News.
Visibility particularly in the evening is very poor and residents especially, those living near the road have their food, water and rooms now at the mercy of dust.
Women in the community say they cannot dry their cloths after washing because everywhere is dusty. ’’Sometimes you will be in the mosque praying and all of a sudden you cannot breath’’, a concerned community member, Iddrisu Abdulai told Zaa News.
The Tamale metropolitan assembly used bulldozers to level the road to make it accessible to the residents, but the community members say the assembly should have resurfaced it with gravel or wait after the harmattan season is over.
Narrating their suffering to Zaa News Iddrisu Abdulai, metaphorically, said almost every member in the community now has a grey hair adding that you need to bathe or change clothes after leaving the community for Tamale Township. According to him, he would have preferred the Tamale Metro Assembly bought roasted chicken for the residents to the supposed resurfaced road because what they are going through now is unbearable.
Banvim Dohini is one of the peri-urban communities in the Tamale south constituency that lacks potable drinking water because the two stand pipes in the community according children and women our news team spoke to are opened once in a month. This compels children and women to commute long distances in search of potable water.
The Chief of the community together with the community members has sent their concerns to the metropolitan chief executive for Tamale, Hanan Gundadow Abdul-Rahaman to look into the matter. The Tamale Mayor paid a reciprocal courtesy visit to the community and assured them of the assembly’s commitment to improving the state of the deplorable nature of the road.
By Ibrahim Dikunyalala/zaaradio.com
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