National health campaign relaunched
An enriched national health promotion campaign to encourage people to lead healthy lifestyles has been re-launched in Accra.
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The campaign, dubbed: “GoodLife, Live it Well”, is a collaborative initiative of the governments of Ghana and the United States and championed by the Ghana Health Service (GHS).
It is being implemented in collaboration with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Ministry of Health.
First launched in 2010 as a communication tool to raise awareness of how to imbibe the habit of healthy living, GoodLife, Live it Well, is the principal health communication brand for the GHS to promote positive health behaviours through television, radio, social media and print advertisement.
The campaign also provides a national platform for discussing healthy behaviours related to family planning, maternal, newborn and child health; malaria prevention and treatment; water, sanitation, nutrition, hygiene and other emergency risk communications on diseases such as Ebola and cholera.
The enhancement of the campaign has moved the brand from passive knowledge to active wisdom and avoids presenting biomedical solutions as simple and self-evident and actionable but a health model that takes into account the local context.
In support of the campaign; the USAID is providing $10 million, as well as technical support, for the development of the campaign messages.
Relaunch
In a statement read on his behalf to relaunch the GoodLife campaign in Accra last Thursday, President John Dramani Mahama said the government remained committed to quality healthcare delivery and would continue to work with development partners to realise the country’s desire for a healthy population for national development.
President Mahama said the launch of the comprehensive integrated health promotion brand would effectively engage all Ghanaians in a dialogue to improve their health by reaching them with meaningful, impactful and entertaining social and behavioural change communication programmes.
He commended the Ministry of Health, the GHS, the USAID and all development partners for their collaboration to ensure a healthy population through quality health-care delivery interventions.
Campaign to benefit all
In his remarks, the US Ambassador to Ghana, Mr Robert P. Jackson, said the stakeholders expected the campaign to reach and benefit every person in Ghana over the next three years.
He said a healthy population was one of the enablers of economic growth.
“Healthy children are attentive students. They grow into healthy educated adults who can create and fill the jobs that will propel the Ghanaian forward,” he said.
For her part, Ghana’s UNICEF representative, Ms Susan Ngongi, said the campaign was very crucial because it emphasised prevention, which had been said to be better than cure.
“There are many health behaviours that are simple, cost-effective, good for individuals and yield so much in terms of collective development outcomes,” she said.
Ms Ngongi said imbibing such simple health behaviours such as washing of hands with soap under running water, breastfeeding exclusively for six months, immunising children or giving birth with the assistance of trained healthcare professionals would help in disease prevention.