Health Care & Lifestyle –The Way Forward is Henry Lartey & GCPP

In Ghana we must learn to think of health as being not merely the absence of sickness and disease, but also as a state of physical, psychological and spiritual well-being. We must remember that health is a complex interaction of many variables, not only including the biological and genetic predisposition of each individual, but equally as important is our social and economic sense of well-being. It is in this spirit that GCPP embraces the spirit of true health as the intended outcome of Ghana's future health care system, and it is in this spirit that we are planning our new health care system.

We seek to create a Health Sector Strategy that results in the improvement of health conditions for every Ghanaian, elevating Ghana's health delivery system to that of first world standards by the year 2030. In our Modern Ghana initiative, we seek to develop healthy people with healthy lifestyles in a healthy environment.

Good health does not just occur overnight. More and more nations around the world are awakening to the reality that just like areas of employment and education, government expenditure on health is required to have a direct impact on the health status of our citizens. And yet, this investment in health is also a personal one. Ghanaians have to want to be healthy. GCPP knows that it is difficult to be healthy if there are no jobs; it is difficult to have a healthy life-style if one is not educated; and it is almost impossible to be healthy if the nation does not produce enough food supplies to sustain its people. Clearly, these issues of health embrace our entire society.

In our Modern Ghana, we recognize the need for policies that will help us escape the poverty trap. By investing in health education, we are also investing in a cyclical process that contributes to economic growth and human development. Actually, investments in education, health, nutrition, water and sanitation result in complimentary impacts whereby strategic investments in any one of these factors contribute to better outcomes in the others. That is why our solar cities will be built around principles of clean water and adequate sanitation which will also determine health outcomes. GCPP understands that sanitation is extremely important to the health of our people. Through sanitation we can reduce infectious diseases, thereby leading to the improved nutritional status of our children and increases in their learning ability.

Today, many of the risky health factors affecting our people are either misperceived as not being risky, or they are only superficially understood by the population. These include being overweight, cigarette smoking, alcohol abuse, fatty and high salt diets with lots of refined sugars, sedentary lifestyle, failure to properly treat hypertension and diabetes mellitus, multiple sex partners, and poor health seeking behavior. Consequently, our entire health system needs to be overhauled. Ghana needs new human resources, new physical resources, and new financial resources for our modern health sector.