Rare Disease Ghana lights up Ridge Hospital; calls for a National Policy.

The Rare Disease Ghana Initiative held its 7th annual Rare Disease Day on February 29, 2024, at the Greater Accra Regional Hospital.

According to Executive Director for Rare Diseases Initiative Samuel Adjei, it is a global event that is observed to create awareness and ignite support for over 300 million rare disease patients.

"Rare Diseases Day is a day that is dedicated to creating awareness and raising support for over 300 million people who live with rare diseases around the World. So this is a global event," he told the media.

He mentioned that the Rare Disease Day observance has been going on for 17 years, with Ghana joining in 2018.

"It has been happening for the past 17 years but in Ghana, we joined in 2018 and this is the seventh Rare Disease Day we are observing."

"We use this moment to call on everybody, the general public, policymakers, our clinicians, researchers, and the patent community to all come together to make sure that the needs and the interests of persons living with rare diseases are considered. So we use this to create awareness and raise a voice for all the people who live with rare diseases. A significant number remain undiagnosed so we use this moment to ask that we pay attention and make sure that we find those diseases that have not been diagnosed as well," he added.

The Rare Disease Ghana Initiative on their seventh observation called on the government for a national policy to train Ghanaian health workers to identify and treat rare diseases.

They also pleaded for enhancement of the diagnostics by inculcating genetic diagnosis while improving the overall health infrastructure.

The Rare Disease Ghana Initiative urges people to come to visit the Greater Accra Regional Hospital if they discover complications that are uncommon for testing.