A psychiatrist, Dr. James Bediako Asare has stated that mentally challenged persons cannot be affected by the recent cholera outbreak that has affected thousands of people and claimed many lives.
The psychiatrist, who spoke to the DAILY HERITAGE said though Vibrio Cholera, the bacteria that causes cholera, is contracted by eating faecal matter or through an infected person, mad men and women are immune because their system is used to faecal matter.
According to the doctor, mostly, mentally challenged persons live in bad environment and under unhygienic conditions, so their immune system has developed and become tough with time to fight against common diseases which can affect and hospitalize many people in society.
He said despite the fact that the mentally challenged persons who live on the streets eat anything they lay hands on, go through their daily affairs within the confines of unhygienic environment, with some of them eating from garbage sites and gutters, they still go through the test of time without falling ill.
"Not even the deadly Ebola virus can affect mentally challenged persons because all the modalities that lead to the infection are not part of their living condition, they don't mingle with society, to be smeared the body fluid of an Ebola patient and no handshakes," he added.
Dr Osei, who is currently in charge of the Psychiatric Hospital in Accra again confirmed that psychiatric patients are immune against so many diseases, and cited for example that most mentally challenged persons are neglected by society so they sleep outside in mosquito infested areas, but still survive.
He claimed that people who spend their lifetime outside Africa are bound to have severe malaria even with a bite of a mosquito, while those who are born and live in Africa may have little problem or no problem at all, because the system had built an immune system that can fight the germs.
"Though they are humans and only mentally challenged, their advantage over us is that they live in filth and so many germs and bacterial have been accustomed in their body to fight against diseases, so in the outbreak of diseases they are not affected."
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