Intensify efforts at prevention to curtail NCDs - Health Expert

Dr Dennis Laryea, Manager of the Non-communicable Disease Control Programme of the Ghana Health Service, has urged government and stakeholders within the health sector to intensify efforts on preventive measures to help curtail Non-communicable Diseases (NCDs).

He said enforcement of regulations through the taxation of items such as tobacco, alcohol, sugar sweetened foods, which were the risk factors, as well as subsidizing the health service and redistribution of human resources for health, especially doctors, were some of the ways to prevent Non-communicable Diseases.

Dr Laryea said this in Accra, when delivering a lecture on “Changing Nature of Problem and Economic Impact” of Non-communicable Diseases during a public forum organised by the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences.

The forum, which is on the theme “Non-communicable Diseases”, is aimed at creating awareness on non-communicable diseases such as hypertension, cancer, obesity and diabetes.

He said, the economic impact of such disease were enormous, adding that, the best way to reduce this impact was to put in place measures that would minimise the risk factors and help prevent their occurrence.

“The issue of NCDs is tricky because for instance, when there's an outbreak of cholera it is easy for people to respond but with NCDs you need to put in money for a long time to get results so sometimes it may not be attractive to politicians”, he said.

Dr Laryea bemoaned the lack of strict enforcement of regulations by authorities, especially the Food and Drug Authority on the major risk factors such as alcohol and tobacco.

“There is a lot of alcohol intake by people, especially children because they are getting access to it due to the aggressive advertisement on the product”, he said.

“And then there is tobacco, especially ‘shisha’. People actually believe that it is safe because they believe it smells nice, it’s not like a cigarette but ‘shisha’ contains all the chemicals that are contained in tobacco, in cigarette and even more”.

“If you smoke ‘shisha’ for let's say about an hour it's like smoking 100 sticks of cigarettes, so shisha is not safe as we are being made to believe”. He further advised the public to minimize the intake of fast foods and fried foods in order to avert such diseases, especially obesity. Dr William Bosu, Technical Advisor responsible for non-communicable diseases at the West African Health Organisation based in Burkina Faso said the World Health Organisation recognised five major risk factors for NCDs. These factors, he said, included physical inactivity, unhealthy diet, harmful use of alcohol, tobacco and air pollution. Dr Bosu who delivered his lecture under a sub-theme “Magnitude of Problem and Causes” stated that, four major NCDs were responsible for 94, 400 deaths, representing 43 per cent of total deaths in Ghana. He therefore called on government to show more commitment in the fight against such disease to reduce casualties.