Promote good health not treatment – Joyce Aryee

The Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Chamber of Mines, Ms Joyce Aryee, has emphasized the need to change from treating diseases to promoting good health especially in homes.

Achieving good health needed a look at the grassroots' problems, which emanated from homes and understanding that the home environment affected the health of the people, she said.

Speaking at the Eighth Annual Public Lectures of the Ghana Medical Association (GMA) in Accra she noted that certain pollutants in homes often exceeded those found outside.

It was on the theme: "Home Environment and Health."

Ms Aryee said Ghanaians had turned a blind eye to all that went into keeping homes neater and safer adding that people living in densely populated areas were exposed to noise levels exceeding 55 decibels (dB).
Residents in such areas therefore did not benefit from a sleeping environment that complied with WHO guidelines of not more than 30dB over eight hours, she said.

She added: "We complain but we do little to remedy the situation".

She mentioned some of the health risks associated with high noise levels as pain and hearing fatigue, hearing impairment including annoyance and interference with speech communication.

Ms Aryee said an estimated 80 per cent of the population in Accra lived in high density and unplanned settlements where waste water from domestic activities was unregulated hence the haphazard discharge of water in the yard, streets and open drains. Only a few households practice disposal of waste water in septic tanks.

Indiscriminate disposal of waste water did not only pose a health threat to residents but was also a major environment threat to water resources since almost every water source in the country had become a receptor of waste water often containing human excreta.

Source: GNA