World Health Day Launched (Spread)

THE Minister of Health, Dr George Sipa-Ajah Yankey, yesterday launched the World Health Day in Accra with a call on health workers to re-dedicate themselves to the improvement of healthcare delivery in the country.
Addressing participants at a well-attended ceremony at the Ghana Medical Association (GMA) auditorium, Dr Yankey said, “Let us be convinced that any life lost must have received the best of treatment from us and our colleagues, that the loss was not unpreventable”.
He also reiterated the government’s preparedness to provide the right leadership towards the achievement of the objectives of the health sector and said as a government, they would work towards improving emergency services in the country.
April 7 each year has been set aside as the World Health Day by the World Health Organisation (WHO) to commemorate the establishment of the organisation by the United Nations (UN). This year’s theme is: “Save Lives: Make Hospitals Safe in Emergencies” to emphasise the importance of protecting health facilities to continue to be functional in times of emergencies and humanitarian crises.
Present at the function were the Director General of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), Dr Elias Sory, officials of some donor agencies, heads of agencies and programmes under the GHS, health professionals, as well as other officials within health sector.
Delivering the keynote address, Dr Yankey urged health workers to work towards the reduction of avoidable deaths, be prepared for emergencies anytime and anywhere, stressing that the health sector could not continue to explain away loss of precious lives.
He observed that this year’s theme might have been chosen because of recent increasing rate of accidents and emergencies that were currently confronting the global community, adding that in some parts of developing world, including Ghana, accident rates had risen to very high proportions.
To get the work done, the Minister of Health said he had identified emergency service as one of the prime areas for investment by the government and explained that the country needed a health system that responded to the priorities of Ghanaians.
In line with that, he said the government would this year work on the passage of the National Ambulance Service Bill to transform the Ambulance Unit into a National Ambulance Service to make it more effective in providing pre-hospital services.
Dr Yankey said the government was also working hard to increase the fleet of ambulances, train more health personnel in emergency service delivery as well as procure air ambulances and construct heliports in selected health locations.
For his part, the WHO Country Representative in Ghana, Dr Daniel Kertesz, described emergencies as situations that demanded immediate action and response and included floods, fire outbreaks, earthquakes, road traffic accidents or the consequences of armed conflicts.
Providing figures to support his point, Dr Kertesz said road traffic accidents, for example, killed 3,200 people around the world every day with at least 90 per cent of those deaths occurring in low and middle income countries.
He said in 2008 alone, more than 90 per cent of African countries were affected by emergencies and announced that as part of the commemoration of the day, the WHO was advocating a series of best practices which could be implemented in any resource setting to make hospitals and health facilities safe during emergencies.
The Director of the National Ambulance Unit, Dr Ahmed Zakaria, took the opportunity to educate the participants on how to administer first aid to people in emergency situations in the absence of health workers.
The Chairperson for the occasion, Mrs Dina Boakye, who is also the Director, Disaster Department of the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO), advised every Ghanaian to help prevent disasters since the government alone could not do everything.