Ghana’s health record needs improvement – Prof. Badu-Akosah
Professor Agyemang Badu-Akosah, a former Director-General of the Ghana Health Services, at the weekend advocated the initiation of more comprehensive measures to improve on the social determining factors of health.
He observed that the main causes of diseases and deaths among Ghanaians were borne out of socially-related factors, and cited air and water pollution, poor environmental sanitation and housing system, anaemia, malnutrition, poor diets and the lack of physical exercise
Prof. Badu-Akosah was addressing the closing session of the series of public lectures, organized by the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) as part of activities marking the 60th Anniversary Celebration of the University, in Kumasi.
He warned that as the population of the country kept increasing, giving room to uncontrolled urbanization and its attendant consequences, it was imperative that a lot more was done to raise the standard of living of the people.
Prof. Badu-Akosah appealed to stakeholders in the health sector to embark on a conscious effort to improve the housing system, check the haphazard dumping of refuse and air pollution, wanton defecation by the citizenry, which resulted in faecal bacteria, contaminating water bodies, and to ensure regular physical exercise.
He called on the Government to train more health professionals, particularly medical doctors, to improve on the doctor-patient ratio for effective health care delivery.
Professor Badu-Akosah expressed worry that 55 per cent of childhood deaths in the country were due to malnutrition, 59 per cent of women in reproductive group were anaemic and 28 per cent of Ghanaian children suffered from stunted growth.
He said the nation needed a healthy population to create wealth and asked the stakeholders to ‘’address the root cause of the main causes of Out-Patient-Department attendances to benefit the nation.’’
Prof. William Otoo Ellis, the Vice-Chancellor of the KNUST said the university would work hard to improve on its academic programmes to achieve its mandate of spearheading Ghana’s socio-economic agenda through science and technology.
Source: GNA