GHS launches national health campaign

The Ghana Health Service (GHS) and its partners have launched a new national health campaign dubbed “GoodLife, Live it Well” to create awareness among Ghanaians on healthy living.
The campaign provides a platform for the promotion of a wide variety of specific health topics. It will also address social and cultural issues related to the prevention of diseases.
With this initiative, the GHS will indicate its concern not only about issues militating against diseases, but also about other matters such as growth and development in infancy, childhood, adolescence and safe pregnancy and reproductive health practices.
Launching the campaign at a well-attended ceremony in Accra, the Director-General of the GHS, Dr Elias K. Sory, said although there are various health facilities in the country to care for people when they were sick, the best thing for any individual to do in life was to stay healthy.
"When you are successful at preventing diseases, you and your loved ones stay healthier. This will free up your time, money and energy so that you can focus on more on productive and fulfilling things", he said.
Dr Sory said there were illnesses and diseases which could afflict a person and mentioned malaria, HIV AIDS, malnutrition, measles, mumps, diarrhoea, worms, heart attack, stroke, diabetes, cancer, injury, trauma from accidents, among others.
He underscored the need for the country, with support from her development partners, to adopt different approaches to find out the latest and best ways to deal with specific diseases.
“But for the prevention approaches to be most effective, this must be a partnership between you and the Ghana Health Service. You need to be a central participant in the prevention of disease for you and your family. We are there to help you but when it comes to prevention, you are the star player and the key beneficiary”, he said.
To stay healthy, Dr Sory advocated sleeping under Insecticide Treated Nets (ITNs) to prevent malaria, reduction of sexual partners or the use of condoms to prevent HIV, consumption of balanced diet, hand washing with soap before eating to avoid diarrhoea and daily exercise, getting adequate sleep to reduce the risk of heart attack, stroke and other cardiovascular.
He pointed out the need for integration of various initiatives, adding "If the new health topics are all linked to a unifying theme, people will see that each new message is a building block towards a common objective”.
Dr Sory also urged pregnant women to attend antenatal clinics regularly, fully immunise their children to prevent deadly diseases and observe continuous breastfeeding of their babies.
For her part, the Director, Family Health Division of the GHS, Dr Gloria Quansah-Asare, said the GoodLife initiative was about the prevention of diseases and health promotion,thereby providing individuals with the necessary foundation to enable “you and your loved ones to achieve your Good Life”.
Without health, she said, it would become very difficult, if not impossible to enjoy good life, adding that the health sector was being prescriptive about good life and encouraging people to come out with what their good life should be and work towards it.
“What is your good life, think about what makes your life good, what you value in life, think about how you would achieve if you didn’t have your health, and finally, begin to take steps to maintain your health and prevent disease”, she stressed.
The Deputy Country Director of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Mr Peter Argo, suggested that local languages should be used to get the messages being championed under the new initiative across to majority of Ghanaians.
Presenting campaign materials to promote the Good Life initiative, the Chief Party of Behaviour Change Support (BCS) Project, Mr Ian Anderson, said different approaches would be used to get to the people.
He mentioned the use of multi-media activities which included teasers on television, songs, billboards and promotional adverts.
He said a total of 900 volunteers would be engaged to reach out to the people in the communities for them to also benefit from the GoodLife initiative.