Kunbuor calls for change in lifestyle (Mirror News)

Saturday, November 6, 2009
THE Minister of Health designate, Dr Benjamin Kunbuor, has observed that the overwhelming challenge to the health of this country has to be confronted through proper sanitation, nutrition and a change in lifestyle.
He noted that the unhygienic conditions under which some people lived and the breakdown of community systems of protection and prevention of diseases constituted one of the biggest challenges confronting the health sector.
“For instance, we are called to manage malaria and sometimes watch children die out of preventable diseases when our communities continue to create the environment that precipitate these diseases in the first place”, he stressed.
Dr Kunbuor made these observations in a speech read on his behalf at the opening of the 12th biennial national delegates conference and the launch of the golden jubilee celebration of the Ghana Registered Nurses Association (GRNA) in Accra.
The theme for the three-day conference was “Nurses: Meeting Communities Expectations With Passion Through Innovations”.
Dr Kunbour said he expected Ghanaian nurses to take the opportunity to explore and examine ways of not only improving access to services in health facilities but to also champion the cause of establishing measures for upholding the principles of community accountability for health in the society.
He said the health sector was moving from a disease -centred- approach to health care delivery to a system that would protect the health of the individual through a better understanding of the role individuals and communities played in health development, adding that “while the communities expect much from us, we must also try and communicate our expectations to them at the least opportunity we get”.
Delivering the keynote address, a lecturer at the Central University College, Mrs Jane Aba Mansa Okrah, said health care reforms going on all over the world and particularly in West Africa, had supported the urgent call for more relevant and quality health services.
Mrs Okrah, who is a professional nurse, noted that the call had been given a greater impetus with the new world economic order, growing and ageing global and national populations, limited resources to meet the needs of these populations and an increasing demand from users of health services.
The President of the association, Mrs Alice Darkowaa Asare-Allottey, stated that as nursing continued to be more challenging in a dynamic world, there was the expectation that nursing and midwifery innovations would be a fundamental source of progress to health care systems globally.
She pointed out that through innovations, community health nurses had moved from fixed location clinics to village residences built by the community, provided door-to-door services delivery in the community as well as ambulatory care and visits to all houses of health education.
The chairperson for the function who is also a former president of the GRNA, Mrs Emma Helen Banga, entreated nurses to continue to provide quality services to the sick and the needy just like was done those who practised nursing in times past.