HEALTH SERVICES DIRECTORS ATTEND CONFAB (PAGE 20)

THE Minister of Health, Major Courage Quashigah(retd), has expressed concern over the increasing poor environmental conditions at various parts of the country, and called for more pragmatic measures to contain the menace.
He said the existing methods for controlling and managing waste in the country had not yielded the desired impact, noting that ‘‘infrastructure for waste management has not kept pace with population growth”.
The minister further observed that poor hygienic conditions in which most Ghanaians lived, worked, had their education and recreated had a major impact on their lives, and that polluted air, water and soil quality in the country was also mainly due to improper disposal of waste, emission of dangerous gases from industries and vehicles, and smoke from burning waste and bushfires.
In a speech read on his behalf at the 16th annual District Directors of Health Services Group Conference, Major Quashigah said ‘‘our poor lifestyles and self-created environmental factors manifest themselves in preventable high levels of morbidity and mortality in the country’.’
The conference was on the theme; “Strengthening Sub-districts Systems for Effective Implementation of the High Impact Rapid Delivery (HIRD) towards achieving MDG 4 and 5”.
He stressed the need to ensure clean surroundings at all times to help reduce communicable diseases and the high incidence of malaria which are the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in the country.
‘‘The total cost of malaria treatment in the country is estimated to be around GH¢664.6 million, equivalent to over twice the Ministry of Health’s (MOH) budget,’’ Major Quashigah revealed.
The minister noted that 90 per cent of diseases that were laboriously and expensively attended to at various health facilities in the country could easily be prevented if people adopted appropriate environmental practices and lifestyles.
‘‘There is no doubt that we need a new direction if as a ministry and a nation we are to achieve our collective vision; that calls for a paradigm shift from curative to health promotion and the adherence to principles of primary health care,’’ he stated.
Major Quashigah observed that with the prevailing health statistics, coupled with the current pace of implementation of some interventions, the country was unlikely to attain the Millennium Development Goals 4 and 5 by the year 2015.
For instance under the MDG, maternal and child mortality are to be reduced by three quarters and two-third respectively by the year 2015.
The chairman of the DDHS, Dr James Sarkodie, noted that the gains made in the health status of the country since 1998 had not seen any appreciable improvement as infant mortality had increased from 57 per 1,000 in 1998 to 64 per 1,000 live births in 2003, with most of the deaths up to 75 per cent occurring in the neonatal period.
‘‘Under five mortality has also increased from 108 to 111 per 1000 live births, according to the Ghana Demographic Health Survey report, while maternal mortality still remains high with wide regional variations and figures between 214 to over 500 per 100,000 live births have been quoted as the maternal mortality ratio for the country,’’ he revealed.
The chairman explained that it was for these reasons that the conference brought together content specialists and other experts to brainstorm and deliberate over key issues that would help ensure growth in the health sector.
Dr Sarkodie however noted that if the challenges facing the sector, such as funding, transport, human resource, accommodation, infrastructure and logistics were not provided, there was very little they could achieve.