Category: Medical

The Ministry of Health (MOH) has pledged to support the National Blood Service (NBS) to address the challenges affecting its operations.

Dr Ignatius Awinibuno, Director of Allied Health, MOH, said being aware of the critical problems affecting the service, the Ministry was prepared to mobilise national and global efforts in strengthening and sustaining blood supply programmes in the country.

Dr. Awinibuno made the pledge at a ceremony to commemorate World Blood Donor Day in Accra on the theme: ‘Give blood, give plasma, share life, share often.’

The event is to recognise and celebrate the effort of blood donors in saving lives in the country, particularly, voluntary donors.

The Director of Allied Health said blood was an essential aspect in the management and treatment of diseases, adding that the demand for blood continued to grow faster than supply, hence, the need for all to donate to save a life.

He said: ‘there is no way we can achieve targets for the sustainable development goals and universal health coverage without having timely accessible blood.’

Dr Francis Kasolo, Country Representative to Ghana, World Health Organisation (WHO), expressed worry as Ghana’s donation rate stood at 5.8, falling short of the country’s target of 10 donations per 1000 people.

He said despite the significant progress made, many countries, including Ghana still faced the challenge of making sufficient blood available, while ensuring its quality and safety.

He urged the Government and its stakeholders to build a sustainable and resilient national blood systems infrastructure to increase the collection of blood from voluntary donors.

Dr. Hannah Ayettey, Senior Specialist, Radiation and Clinical Oncologist at Korle- Bu Teaching Hospital, told the GNA that the significant shortage in the country was worrying.

She said: ‘ I lost a child years ago as a House Officer, because that particular type of blood needed was not available in the hospital, so we had to go round the major hospitals in Accra but unfortunately none of them had that type, so it is a major problem.’

She said the theme for the event would go a long way to encourage people to donate blood to save lives. She noted that with the 5.8 collection rate of blood in the country, ‘we are nowhere near and need to actively do more with the support from stakeholders to create awareness.’

Dr Shirley Owusu-Ofori, Chief Executive Officer, National Blood Service, said the Service and the Ministry needed the concerted efforts of the media, Civil Society Organisations and Faith-Based Organisations to support the drive.

‘ I am glad to state that we have made significant progress with our engagement so far with our stakeholders though a lot more work is needed to make desirable impact,’ she added.

Madam Noeline Kumor, a 45th time blood donor, told the GNA that she was happy to be part of a lifesaving mission in the country, indicating that she was always motivated to donate blood due to its health benefits.

The NBS in conjunction with the Global Blood Fund (a United Kingdom Charity) as part of this year’s blood donor day celebration launched a story contest dubbed: ‘ how blood has touched my life’.

The contest is to enable individuals share captivating stories accompanied by pictures and videos about how blood has touched their lives.

The contest which ends on the August 31, 2023, would attract prizes for first three winners.

Source: Ghana News Agency

Professor Fred Binka, a Clinical Epidemiologist, School of Public Health, University of Health and Allied Sciences, Ho, has called for the conversion of the COVID-19 Health Recovery Levy into a Public Health Emergency Fund (PHEF).

In an interview, he told the Ghana News Agency that there was no need to keep the COVID-19 health levy, as the government had declared that coronavirus was no longer a public health threat.

‘What will be nice is for the levy to be used to create a Public Health Emergency Fund to support the country’s preparation for the next pandemic,’ he said.

Prof Binka advised that the management of the PHEF when created, should be left to a constituted board of trustees and not to the Ministry of Finance.

‘If the Ministry of Finance wants to help, then they should be part of the committee, but they should not be left to manage the funds,’ he said.

The COVID-19 Health Recovery Levy Act, 2021, (Act 1068), imposes a one per cent special levy on the supply of goods, services, and imports, to raise revenue to support COVID-19 expenditure and to provide for related matters.

The rate is calculated on the value of the taxable supply of goods, and services, or the value of imports.

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, in his 29th televised address to the nation on measures taken to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, announced that the disease was no longer a public health emergency of global concern.

‘The emergency is over, and we can safely lift many of the oppressive restrictions we have had to endure, we can shake hands, we can hug, we can visit, and we no longer have to wear masks,’ the President had said.

Commenting on the Levy, the President had stated that, ‘the COVID-19 Health Recovery Levy that was introduced to help fill some of the expenditure holes might not be the most popular tax, but I entreat all of you to bear with us’.

The Clinical Epidemiologist said the PHEF was urgently needed to ensure that the health systems were fit to respond and contain health emergencies.

Prof. Binka, who was the Coordinator of the WHO Emergency Response to Artemisinin Resistance in the Greater Mekong sub-region of Asia, also called for the establishment of a Center for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention to lead emergency preparedness in Ghana.

He said the CDC should be an agency outside the Ministry of Health (MOH), to bring together health training and research institutions, veterinary services, and academia to explore potential partnerships in epidemic preparedness.

‘The CDC when established, would partner with the Ghana Health Service (GHS) to access the strengths and weaknesses of the health systems in preparing and responding to public health threats, by collecting data and training,’ he said.

Prof Binka said in preparing for health emergencies, Ghana needs to ensure that facts about health emergencies are clear, with frontline health workers well-trained on how to screen and detect disease.

‘Medical emergencies are like going to war and your preparedness determines whether you are going to succeed or not, in preparing for public health threats, we need to ensure that laboratories are working with good information systems and rumour detection skills in communities and rural areas,’ he said.

The Clinical Epidemiologist said a CDC establishes information systems, collects information, follows up, creates scenarios, and gets stakeholders to work together to standardise protocols before that lab could be certified to work with other CDCs globally.

Source: Ghana News Agency

Angolan head of State João Lourenço left Luanda Monday for Spain to participate in the Global Conference on the Impact of Vaccination, taking place on June 13-15.

The Head of State was invited to attend the event, promoted by GAVI (Global Alliance for Vaccines), taking into account his “very prominent” participation in vaccination against Covid-19 in Africa.

In the event, the President of the Republic is expected to deliver his speech, according to a note from the Presidency’s Press Secretary.

The meeting will also gather, among other entities, the representatives of multilateral organisations, governments, civil society, companies and universities.

Participants in the meeting will assess the impact achieved by Gavi (an initiative of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) from January 2021 until now, a period in which the initiative faced the double challenge of supporting, with its partners, routine immunization and respond to the needs of Covid-19.

Gavi data indicate that, since 2021, the initiative has provided more than 1.9 billion doses of Covid-19 to 146 countries, through COVAX, and supported 32 immunisation campaigns in response to outbreaks that occurred in the year 2022.

The Vaccines Alliance has also revitalised its immunization programme against HPV (prevents against cancer), and should support the launch of the first vaccine against malaria in the world, later this year.

Since its creation in 2000, Gavi – Alliance of Vaccines has helped to immunize more than 981 million children and prevented more than 16.2 million deaths, which has helped to reduce, by half, child mortality in 73 countries of low income.

Gavi also plays a key role in improving global health security by supporting health systems and funding global stockpiles of Ebola, cholera and yellow fever vaccines.

After two decades, Gavi is focused on protecting, in particular, children who have not received any vaccine.

The Global Alliance for Vaccines brings together developing country and donor governments, the World Health Organisation, UNICEF, the World Bank, vaccine industries, technical agencies, civil society, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and other private sector partners

Source: Angola Press News Agency (APNA)

The 2023 edition of the World Food Safety Day (WFSD) was celebrated on Wednesday, June 7, 2023, under the theme “Food Standards Save Lives” as designated by the World Food Organization.

It is being observed to draw attention and inspire action to help prevent, detect, and manage foodborne risks, contributing to food security, human health, economic prosperity, agricultural production, market access, tourism, and sustainable development.

This day comes as the production of food crops is being threatened in the grass field. Inhabitants in the Babadjou subdivision in the Bamboutos division as in other parts of the grass field, who mainly rely on agriculture to survive, say they have been victims of climate change year in, year out which might lead to critical food crises in years ahead.

They have been victims of huge material damage after seeing their crops destroyed by the effects of desertification. Beans, corn, cabbages, tomatoes, and other food crops, mostly consumed by households, and exported to other parts of the country were completely destroyed this year as farmers went in to plant after the first rains in March this year.

“The beans I planted this year have been completely destroyed. I planted after the first rain which was in March and was expecting that rain will continue. To my greatest surprise, the dry season instead resurfaced,” Ma Pauline, a victim of climate change said. “I don’t know if I’ll have even a bucket of beans this year. Even the corn I planted is really in danger. ” she Pauline adds.

The normal planting season which in the past decades, used to be in the month of March is not the case these past years. The first rain at the beginning of March is now followed by weeks and sometimes months of sun. This gap between the first rain and the normal rainy season as noticed, has been increasing in recent years and some fear it might be a complete shift of season in the years to come. This might lead to a serious food crisis in the area and other parts of Cameroon, experts warned.

Gardeners on their part, especially those at the foot of Mount Bamboutos are used to applying irrigation methods to survive. At the peak of the dry season, they face a water crisis that directly leads to food crises in the area.

According to the World Health Organization, every year, 600 million people get sick due to the 200 different types of illnesses that can be transmitted by food. Young people and populations with limited resources are among the most affected. Foodborne illnesses cause 420,000 preventable deaths every year.

Source: Cameroon News Agency

Professor Christian Agyare, a pharmaceutical microbiologist, says poor quality antibiotics on the market are suspected as one of the major causes of antimicrobial resistance in Ghana.

Quoting from various studies and research were undertaken by the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) College of Health Sciences and other scientists over the last decade, he said a biological assay on penicillins on some selected Ghanaian markets revealed a higher minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) values.

This covered all evaluated penicillin samples compared to the reference samples, the pharmaceutical microbiologist disclosed.

Studies identified that out of the 54 samples evaluated, 61.1 per cent were within the British Pharmacopoeia (BP) and United States Pharmacopoeia (USP) monograph specifications.

Among the samples evaluated, amoxicillin showed a better quality of 82.8 per cent as compared to flucloxacillin (31.3 per cent) and cloxacillin (44.4 per cent).

Prof. Agyare, Provost of the College of Health Sciences, was delivering a paper on the topic: ‘Treating Non-Curable Infectious Diseases and Wounds with Natural Knowledge and Products’, at a Professorial Inaugural Lecture, organised by the KNUST, in Kumasi.

Antimicrobial resistance is the ability of microorganisms to persist or grow in the presence of drugs designed to inhibit or kill them.

This occurs when the bacteria and other microbes adapt and become less susceptible to the pharmacological treatment or intervention being offered.

The lecture looked at the various sources that could contribute to the development of antimicrobial resistance locally, and how natural products could be utilised to modulate antimicrobial resistance for improved therapeutic outcomes.

It dealt with antimicrobial use in aquaculture, animal husbandry and poultry, as well as the quality of selected antibiotics on the Ghanaian market.

On the antimicrobial use in animal husbandry and its implications, Prof. Agyare said many of the antibiotics used in animal husbandry were also essential medicines for use in humans.

‘Residual levels of these antibiotics in animal, poultry and fish products, water bodies and the environment are potential sources for the development of microbial resistance,’ he disclosed.

According to the Provost, a cross-sectional survey using questionnaires and semi-structured interviews was conducted among 400 poultry farms in the Ashanti, Brong-Ahafo and Greater Accra Regions.

Farmers, he said, reported the use of 35 different antimicrobial agents for the management of various conditions such as Newcastle, fowl pox, coccidiosis and coryza infections in their farms.

‘From these agents, 20 essential antibiotics belonging to 10 antibiotic classes were identified. The most frequently used antibiotics were tetracyclines (24.17 per cent), aminoglycosides (17.87 per cent), penicillin (16.51 per cent) and fluoroquinolones (10.55 per cent).

‘Only 63 per cent of the farms completed the recommended duration of antibiotic course, 58 per cent of them indicated that they do follow the recommended withdrawal periods and 88 per cent of the farmers sought veterinary advice prior to antibiotic administration.’ Prof. Agyare noted.

He said it was observed from the study that farmers had easy access to antibiotics and antibiotic-related information from veterinary offices, vet-chemical stores and mobile salesmen.

Touching on the resistance pattern of bacterial isolates of drinking water used in poultry production in the Ashanti Region, he said the study revealed that water used in poultry farms was the source of multi-drug resistant strains.

These include Escherichia coli, Salmonella typhi, Staphylococcus aureus and coagulase-negative staphylococci, which are responsible for various bacterial infections in humans and animals.

‘Most of these isolates were resistant to cephalosporins and penicillin.’ Prof. Agyare disclosed, stressing that almost 95 per cent of the bacterial isolates were multi-drug resistant.

It came to light that total coliforms and faecal Enterococci were present in 97 per cent and 56 per cent of the samples, respectively.

‘From these findings, measures should be taken to make these various sources of water safe for use in animal husbandry as these waters are a potential source of pathogenic and resistant bacterial strains which can cause infections in the animals and farm workers,’ the pharmaceutical biologist cautioned.

He said, prior to the identification of poor-quality antibiotics in the drug supply chain in the country, a study was conducted in three hospitals in Kumasi in the Ashanti Region.

The study identified antimicrobial resistance patterns in strains of Staphylococcus aureus, a resistance-challenging organism.

‘A total of 109 Staphylococcus aureus isolates were obtained from wound and nose swabs of 300 patients.

‘Vancomycin recorded the highest susceptibility of 74.1 per cent, followed by ceftriaxone with 67.6 per cent, erythromycin with 49.0 per cent, ampicillin with 47.0 per cent, and gentamicin with 44.4 per cent.

‘Of the 109 Staphylococcus aureus isolated from the three hospitals, 32.1 per cent exhibited multiple drug resistance.’ Prof. Agyare disclosed.

In a similar study carried out in some fish farms in the Ashanti Region, he said, there was varying resistance to more than 60 per cent of the antibiotics studied, including penicillins, tetracyclines, sulfonamides, macrolides, cephalosporins, quinolones and chloramphenicol.

‘The bacteria isolated from fish samples exhibited multi-drug resistance although farmers reported no recent use of antibiotics on their farms, which was very worrying,’ he said.

It is estimated that antimicrobial resistance causes around 700,000 deaths annually around the world, and all countries in the world are potentially affected.

The death toll could hit 10 million per annum by 2050 if the problem is not properly and adequately addressed, says the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Prof. Agyare described antimicrobial resistance as a global threat to humanity that must be addressed head-on.

‘Efforts must be made to stringently control access to antimicrobial agents that could be a saviour of mankind from the microbial apocalypse through the combined effort of regulators, prescribers, pharmacies and dispensary outlets,’ he advised.

‘Regulatory bodies must intensify surveillance to ensure that antimicrobial products on the market are of the required standard,’ he advised, saying there was a need for a well-defined policy direction to improve antimicrobial stewardship.

Source: Ghana News Agency

The Christ The King Methodist Church Ghana has called for the strengthening of the extended family system and tightening of the social support structures to help address mental health conditions in the country.

The Very Reverend Isaac Kwame Ghartey, Superintendent Minister of the Anaji Estate Circuit, appealed to members of the extended family to avoid social neglect and support one another.

He made the call at a mental health awareness forum and screening exercise, organised by Christ The King Methodist Child and Youth Development Centre, a Compassion International assisted project, in the Sekondi-Takoradi cluster.

It was in partnership with Empire FM and Radio 360 in the Sekondi-Takoradi Metropolis.

The forum, which was on the theme: ‘The Role of the Church in Mental Health,’ brought together experts in the field and stakeholders to elicit ways of addressing the mental health canker in the Ghanaian context.

Very Rev Ghartey said the Church was mandated to help in the fight against mental health, which was fast gaining grounds in the society.

The church owed it a sacred duty to intensify guidance and counselling sessions to address mental health issues.

He advised the public to stay out of worry and anxiety of things that they could not acquire or achieve and be content with what they had.

Reverend Mrs Angelina Ogyiri Asare, a Principal Clinical Health Psychologist at the GHAPOHA Hospital in Takoradi, who spoke on Anxiety Disorder, said anxiety was normal but could lead to disorder behaviour, which required psychiatric attention.

‘Anxiety leads to depression, substance abuse, insomnia, headaches and chronic pain,’ she said.

The Clinical Health Psychologist urged patients with mental health disorders to seek treatment through psychotherapy, medications and trust inaidld to avoid all anxieties.

Mrs Joyce Yeboah, the Regional Director, Department of Community Development, Ghana Health Service, urged parents to examine children regularly to detect disorders and help them to overcome their problems.

Mr Bernard Ekow Aggrey, Project Director of the Church, said mental health patients had rights, which must be respected, and called for training of participants to become mental health clinical psychologists.

Mr Emmanuel Mark Ackon, Presiding Member at the Shama District Assembly, reiterated the need to revisit the extended family system to address the problem.

He stressed the need for district assemblies to collaborate with other stakeholders to address the upsurge in mental health disorders.

Source: Ghana News Agency