Let’s invest in sports to reduce our health budget – GOC President

The President of the Ghana Olympic Committee (GOC), Mr Ben Nunoo Mensah, has reiterated the need for the government to invest in sports to reduce the country’s health budget.

He said a healthy and active citizen would not be prone to non-communicable diseases hence reducing both an individual and country’s health budget.

The GOC President mentioned this at a multi-stakeholder roundtable on the newly initiated community sport and health cooperation between the International Olympic Committee and the World Health Organisation with PATH as the implementers.

Ghana has been selected as one of the first five countries to implement this new policy initiative from the IOC, WHO and PATH.

He said the new collaboration between the International Olympic Committee (IOC), World Health Organisation (WHO), and PATH would increase access to health-enhancing community sport activities for over one million people across five countries by 2025.

He mentioned that according to the IOC, the new cooperation programme with WHO and PATH would strengthen role of sport in building healthy and active communities with three main objectives which are improve access and retention in targeted community sports and physical activity programmes, supporting more people, particularly women and girls and people from diverse backgrounds and abilities, to be more active.

“Another objective is to enhance knowledge, understanding of, and appreciation for, the multiple benefits of regular physical activity and sports participation including prevention of non-communicable diseases, improved mental health and well-being and social connections.

Lastly, strengthen policy planning and investment in community sport and physical activity participation opportunities and infrastructure and the physical activity legacy of the Olympic Games and other global sport events,” he added.

He said the Ghana Olympic Committee would join and support the full implementation of all the action plans that would be drawn from the stakeholder’s engagement.

He also called on the four key Partner-Ministries, that is Sports, Health, Education and Local Government that “when drawing up your various policies and programmes, please make a conscious effort to link these policies and programmes to the vision of Olympism 365.

“Sports is a low-cost but very high-impact tool which we can all use to build together a more peaceful, more equal and more sustainable world for everyone, 365 days a year.”

He emphasised that “if we can all use this low-cost, high-impact tool to eradicate poverty, end hunger, give good health and education, provide clean water, sanitation and energy, push for climate action, strive for peace, justice and build strong institutions, this world will be a much better place for generations unborn.”