"Report Health Problems Early" (Page 38)

Story: Lucy Adoma Yeboah
A Ghanaian neurologist, Dr Albert Aplaku, has noted that it is essential for people to take note of changes in their body system and report to health personnel accordingly for early detection of serious health problems.
He said many chronic and fatal diseases which affect the nervous system for example, began with common symptoms such as fatigue, numbness, rashes, blurred vision and focal disorder, among others, which many people take for granted.
Dr Aplaku, who is a physician specialist at the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital (KBTH), was presenting a paper on “Overview of Auto-Immune Diseases” at the launch of Sharecare Ghana in Accra on Thursday.
Sharecare Ghana, which was started in 2006, is by a group of Ghanaians who are affected with auto-immune disorder. Auto-immune disorder occurs when the body mistakenly attacks and destroys its own healthy tissues, organs and cells, which result in a myriad of disorders including paralysis, which is collectively termed auto-immune disorders.
The Co-ordinator of Sharecare Ghana is Nana Yaa Agyeman, a journalist and wife of the Editor of the Accra Daily Mail, Alhaji Haruna Attah. Nana Yaa has suffered from the disease for the past 12 years.
Dr Aplaku said one of such disorders, referred to as Multiple Sclerosis (MS), was a complex and unpredictable disease which affected the central nervous system, adding that it affected mostly women between the ages of 20 and 40.
Dr Aplaku said about 10 per cent of all neurological clinical attendance, which was between 2,000 and 3,000 patients nationwide, were affected by auto-immune disorder.
In a speech read on his behalf, the Minister of Health, Major Courage Quashigah (retd) said currently, although there was no separate policy and specific programme on auto-immune disorders, it could be said that the government’s policy on the disease fell within the overall health policy goals and strategies.
“It is the government’s policy to develop systems to reduce the burden of disease, mortality and disability suffered by those afflicted with the disorders and others and to reduce inequality in access to health and health services.
A specialist in Internal Medicine, Dr Ida Kuwomoo, said predisposing factors which led to the disease were genetic, infections and the environment in which one found him or herself, adding that about 70 per cent of sufferers were women between puberty and child-bearing age.
Speaking on “Scientific Background to Auto-immune Diseases”, an immunologist at the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research (NMIMR), Dr Michael Ofori, said the disease had been found to cause high and chronic morbidity and disability in many developed countries where extensive studies had been conducted.
He also reiterated that women were susceptible than men to the disease, adding that with about nine million individuals with auto-immune diseases found in the USA alone, approximately 6.7 million of them were women.
“In developing countries, including Ghana, the availability of data on the prevalence and incidence is lacking,” he stated.
Narrating her personal experience, Nana Yaa Agyeman said it troubled her that others might be going through the same confusion she and her family went through when she first fell ill 12 years ago hence her decision to form Sharecare Ghana to give support to sufferers.
She said the group was campaigning towards the inclusion of auto-immune diseases in the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), adding that although many of them had registered under the scheme, they still had to pay for expensive tests.
The chairman for the occasion, who is also the Rector of the Ghana College of Physicians and Surgeons, Professor Paul Kwame Nyame, advised Ghanaians not to politicise the NHIS but to support it by registering so that together everybody could benefit.