Pork Show in Ghana - the swine are safe! Only foreigners have the flu...

Luckily Ghana has escaped the epidemic numbers of H1N1 cases so far. In fact most of Sub-Saharan Africa has very few cases (apart from South Africa). It’s just as well, with the lack of adequate healthcare and access to clinics, medication etc.

According to the World Health Organization, Ghana has only 18 reported cases of confirmed swine flu. ALL of these are from the International School that my son attends. He is one of the 18.

The Ghana Health Service took the whole thing quite seriously and closed the school down for over a week. They even made it front page news!

Meanwhile behind the scenes, in our case, the GHS didn’t bother to call us nor provide Tamiflu. Luckily, my son’s case was really mild. By the time we had the results of his tests back (2 days after the test), his symptoms were gone.

Also not so sure how contagious this virus is, since the rest of us in the house didn’t get a sniffle…

But I digress.

The fact that Ghana (except for a few privileged International students) has escaped the worst of the H1N1 strain, does not mean that Ghanaians are oblivious to the global hype.

In fact, the pork farmers and the roadside sellers here know all too well how rumours can ruin an industry.

This weekend, while at a Christmas bazaar in the 35 degree heat of Accra, I happened upon THIS:



What cracked me up – besides EVERYTHING – was the way they chose to 'get the message across' – pork is safe (i.e. cool – notice the cartoon pig with black shades), in contrast with the whole dead, cooked pig, nose burnt to a charred crisp, with pineapples for eyes!!! Gotta love Ghana.

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