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Members of the Ghana Burns Survivors Federation have appealed to the public, particularly families and friends of those involved in last Wednesday’s fire explosion at the GOIL Filling Station in Accra not to discriminate against the survivors but to accept them wholly.

The members made up of people who survived burns said one of the main challenges facing burns survivors was public stigmatisation which has made it very difficult for the survivors to easily reintegrate into society.

Speaking in an interview with The Mirror, Mr. Dennis Opoku Gyamfi, Founder of the Federation, said that he foresaw the survivors of the explosion going through some of the challenges that most of the members had gone through.

He therefore thought it wise to sensitise their families on the need to show care and attention after the victims were discharged from the hospital.

According to him, “it is even difficult for the survivors themselves to accept their new form and coupled with the rejection or public shunning, some of them even contemplate suicide.”

This, he said, should not be the case if the public would learn to accept and offer them the same recognition as offered ‘normal’ people.

Mr. Gyamfi who was in the company of other members of the federation, said many of the survivors who were in school before the accident, were unable to continue with their education.

This he said was due to “how the public stare at them as if they were outcasts and are shunned, though unknowingly by their colleagues”.

 “This is very demoralising and kills the spirit of the survivor, forcing most of them to abandon their education,” he said.

Those into self-employment, he said, “do not get people to patronise their products and services due to the stigma attached to the survivors.”

Mr Gyamfi said because of the scars, lots of people were afraid to approach them, thus making them isolated.

Although the federation has been carrying out some sensitisation programmes, he said it lacks the wherewithal to scale up its programmes and would welcome assistance from well-meaning Ghanaians to help them reach out to many more people.

He said it is the hope of the federation that through its activities, a lot more people would learn not to stigmatise them to enable them to be properly reintegrated into society.