Workshop for health promotion practitioners opens
The Director of the College of Health and Wellbeing, Kintampo (CoHK), Dr Emmanuel Teye Adjase, has urged health promotion officers within the Ghana Health Service (GHS) to package their messages on good health in clear and simple terms to help Ghanaians appreciate the need to live healthy lifestyles.
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This, he said, would help to cut down on the huge disease burden of the nation, adding that most diseases that are afflicting people today could be prevented if much attention was paid to its prevention.
Dr Adjase said this at the opening ceremony of a two-day stakeholders' meeting and orientation workshop, organised for health promotion practitioners working with the GHS across the country at the college at Kintampo in the Brong Ahafo Region.
The meeting, which is being attended by about 108 participants from the GHS headquarters in Accra, the 10 regions and districts, is to educate and equip them with effective communication skills to go into the communities and on the airwaves to educate the public on good health.
Dr Adjase noted that the nation had always focused on curative health rather than preventive health and said it was time to shift the attention to the prevention of diseases in order to help reduce the pressure on health facilities.
He said when Ghanaians received proper information on diseases and how to live healthy lifestyles, it would help to cut down on the huge health bill to enable the government to make savings on health and channel savings into other productive sectors of the economy.
The Deputy Director, of the Health Promotion Department of the GHS, Mrs Grace Kafui Annan, in her presentation on the overview of health promotion global and local, said plans were far advanced to incorporate health into all of the policies in the country and urged health promotion officers to go to the grassroots level to educate the people to bring about change in their lifestyles.
The Head of Health Promotion of CoHK, Mr Isaac Azindow, who presented a paper titled, “Upstream Thinking: The Health Promotion Practitioner”, said if Ghana wanted to have a healthy and productive population, there was the need to re—orient its health practitioners to seek the causes of diseases and disabilities and address them through prevention rather than treatment.
By Samuel Duodu/Daily Graphic/Ghana
