By: Godfred Amoaful
The National Health Insurance Authority, NHIA will be introducing a free adult screening of Non-Communicable Diseases NCDs, largely hypertension and diabetes, through sponsorship annually.
This is to support efforts towards promoting good health habits for the prevention, and control of NCDs which are major contributors to the high mortality rate in Ghana.
Programs Manager of NCDs at the Ghana Health Service, Dr. Efua Commeh who made this known during the 47th Annual General and Scientific meeting of the Ghana chapter of the West African College of Physicians in Accra, said the Ghana Health Service is promoting institutional screenings to ensure, that various institutions and individuals across the country adopt health screening as an important aspect of their lives to avoid health complications.
Non- communicable diseases, NCDs including cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, chronic respiratory diseases, and cancers are significant public health challenges that transcend national borders.
They require coordinated efforts at national and regional levels to manage and mitigate their impacts effectively. Globally, 41 million out of 55 million deaths in 2019 were due to NCDs, representing 74 percent of health related deaths.
Annually, 17 million people die before the age of 70 from NCDs, of which 86 percent are premature deaths.
A higher percentage of deaths occur in low-and middle-income countries including Ghana.
Most NCDs are a result of lifestyle behaviors including tobacco use, physical inactivity, unhealthy diet, and alcohol abuse.
Increased consumption of high-energy, and low-nutrient foods containing high levels of sugar, salt, and saturated fat is also a driving force in the rise of NCDs and related deaths.
Dr. Efua Commeh emphasized that the Ghana Health Service will use national and regional approaches through proper policies to with NCDs.
“Screening is very important to our health as adults that is why Ghana Health Service is promoting screening, especially among adults. Now National Health Insurance Authority has been generous enough such that, now they are going to sponsor once yearly an adult screening for NCDs largely hypertension and diabetes, with time, they will include other conditions as well. So that if I want to go and have my medical checkup, in the month of my birth, I will just walk in with my NHIS card and they will do the screening for me freely. It’s crucial for us because we have never had anything like that before.”
“We are promoting institutionalized screening where in the regions across the country, we are calling on various institutions and organizing screenings for them because as a habit for us as a country when we are not sick, we don’t go to the hospital which is not healthy”.
