Public health bill must become law

President John Mahama must prioritise the Public Health Bill to make it become law, according to Rising Ghana, a Non-Governmental Organisation, is asking

Parliament in 2012 passed the Public Health Bill, which also included the Tobacco Bill. That was almost a month after Rising Ghana, then known as Ghana Rising, made a passionate call on the Speaker of Parliament to pass the bill which had been in parliament for years.

Many groups and individuals, including a former Director General of Ghana Health Service, Professor Agyemang Badu-Akorsah, lauded Parliament for passing the Public Health Bill.

Almost a year after it was passed however, the bill is yet to receive Presidential assent to make it into a law.

General Secretary for Rising Ghana, Pastor Raymond Boakye Danquah, made the call on Saturday, March 2, 2013 at the NGO’s monthly Personal Development Seminar dubbed Living a Purposeful Life. It was the second in the year.

Pastor Boakye Danquah maintained further delay in making the bill become law will continue to put the lives on non-smokers at risk because currently, there is no law regulating smoking in the country.

He said making it become law will further reinforce the leadership position that Ghana has taken in Africa, as a party to the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), when it signed the treaty in 2005.

Faced with the devastating effects of the tobacco epidemic, world leaders in 2003 adopted the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), a binding international treaty.

Today, 175 countries, plus the European Union, are Parties to the FCTC, accounting for almost 90 percent of the world’s population including Ghana.

“The entire body of the Rising Ghana is calling on the President of the Republic to also prioritise the Public Health Bill so that Parliament can finish its work on this,” Pastor Danquah stressed.