The World Ignores Non-communicable Diseases

In September 2000 the UN drafted a set of goals, labeled the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), to be accomplished by and large in the developing world by 2015, with the help of the West. The MDG provides a series of concrete benchmarks for improving rights, education, infrastructure, equality, and gender rights within the developing world. 



                                      The Eight MDGs Include

• Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger. 
• Achieve universal primary education. 
• Promote gender equality ad empower women. 
• Reduce child mortality. Improve maternal health. 
• Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases. 
•  Ensure environmental sustainability. 
• Develop a global partnership for development 

The MDG has many broad implications for ad and funding in the areas, which it has defined.    Ghana has modeled its own development agenda on the MDG, they've created a state run mechanism that is venturing to address the issues delineated by the MDG.
    This is a great idea right? Having a set of concrete benchmarks will provide necessary evaluative tools for assessing affective governance. But the MDGs have a serious misgiving: the UN MDG, and therefore Ghana's own development agenda in turn, say nothing about non-communicable diseases (NCDs).
    The NCDs are those that come from lifestyle: diet exercise, genes. Hypertension, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer, the MDG ignores all of them. It's hard for me to explain why the UNDP decided to do this. 3.2% of the population of Ghana is infected with HIV. Hypertension by contrast affects 28.7% of the population. We're on our own when we take control of our health. They have created a framework that makes it hard to fight NCDs. You, you yourself, and no one else, needs to take control to stay healthy. Exercise. Eat healthy foods. Get screened so that you know your sugar level, your cholesterol, and your blood pressure. Stay informed. Need help? Contact us at the Longevity Project, we're here to support you to fight NCDs, as an agency we have very few peers.

Some Habits

We all have such busy schedules, sometimes, between work, school, the kids, the market, the cooking, taking time just for you body can be close to impossible. But staying healthy doesn't have to mean that you take time to go all the way to the gym and run on a treadmill for a half hour. While it is certainly important to try as hard as you can to take time and exercise, there are some small changes which can only help your path to health.

Walk a lot: If you drive, take a taxi, a tro tro, for even you very short trips then your are doing yourself a disservice. Not only are you spending on gas or on fares, but you stay seated all day. How far is work form you? Can you make the commute on foot? What about the market; isn't carry all those groceries home a work out? Maybe you can choose a longer route to walk if you have time, or time yourself and mark any improvements. When the commute is too far to walk, sometimes you can....

Bike: Especially in the suburbs, where things are more spread out than in Accra, and less traffic makes a ride much safer, biking can be a great alternative to the car. Its only fuel is your sweat. Put a basket or a rack on your bike and use it for your shopping; put another seat on it and pick up your kids, it can be fun and rewarding.

Stretch while you watching TV: If you spend just small snippets of time stretching every day, it takes so little work, and can be make you feel great if done consistently. Light stretching can improve your range of motion and blood circulation to your arms and legs. Whenever you're sitting around doing nothing with your body, whether at the office or in front of the TV just try and practice a couple stretches.

Play! I know you may feel silly, but it's great for your body just to move around, play football with your kids a little, maybe go out and catch a ball. Run around in a field. No kids? Do you have dogs? Play with them.

These are far from a work out routine, and I whole heartedly say that you need to try as hard as you can to make time for serious exercise. But  if you can take small steps and change your lifestyle such that it might involve more physical activities on the whole, it can do a world of good.

Starch and Your Diet

Most of the foods that we eat on a day to day, if they are the traditional Ghanaian foods, are fairly healthy. That said, they are also full of starch. Stews that come with banku or kenkey or fufu or omo tuo or cassava do not have so much cholesterol or saturated fat as highly processed, store bought foods. They do, however, emerged from a lifestyle that a lot of us don't lead anymore.

Starch is a great source of energy for the body. We need lots of it if we are using all of it. The bricklayer, the miner, or industrious fisherman among us, who is constantly working his body can't get enough starch. They burn off all the big balls of fufu that they eat. But us who work in an office, do accounts, buy and sell, or write as an occupation, sit for hours during the day. we aren't using all of the starch that we eat, and it can lead to some of the problems that so many suffer. Such a diet without the exercise can lead to diabetes, hypertension, all kinds of diseases.
So...

Unless you make it a habit of really physically exerting your body everyday like a bricklayer, cut down the starch in your diet significantly Eat many more of the wonderful fruits and vegetables which are grown here. Try and get your body moving and your blood flowing a as much as you can.

Priorities

How do you prioritize in your life? Are you concerned with the things that are the most important?

Do you know what kills more Ghanaians than anything else? When adjusting for age the WHO found in 2002 that non-communicable diseases were the main cause of death among Ghanaians, with cardio-vascular diseases the main cause among them. We wash our hands all the time. We cover our mouths when we cough. I see Ghanaians cover their mouths and nose with handkerchiefs at hospitals or around sewers, and avoid touching dirty animals.

That’s all well and good, it is very important to avoid contracting diseases as much as possible. However, the statistic would show that our priorities are askew.

Who exercises every week? Who is thinking about making meals that are balanced and nutritious? We know to wash every day, but do you know your blood pressure? How about your sugar level? Do you know your Body Mass Index? We need to be as concerned about leading a healthy lifestyle and preventing non-communicable diseases as much as we are about catching disease. Get screened, stay informed, and stay alive.

Bicycling: Good for the Environment, for the Economy, and for Your Health

At Gh¢5.30 (about $5.50) per gallon, Ghanaians have more than an ecological incentive to embrace an alternative means of transportation. According to the League of American Bicyclists, an estimated 500,000 bike commuters across the U.S. help that nation to save 227,272 gallons of petrol every single day. During a recent trip to the U.S., I visited with two friends who were dedicated bicycle commuters. One is a retired university professor, who said that he had never driven to his lectures on campus in over twenty years of teaching. The other is a senior judge, who has been bicycling his way to work for years. Both are in great physical condition and are doing something to minimize the adverse effects of their daily routines on the environment.

For Ghana to realistically emulate this sound environmental, economical and healthy practice, we need to encourage and support our governments, national and local, to develop an infrastructure that supports bicycling. It should be much less expensive to incorporate bicycle lanes and similar bicycling-friendly schemes now as we expand our existing road networks and build new ones than to attempt to do it later. For the health of our environment, our pocketbooks and our bodies, let each one of us contact and request our policy makers and executive organs of government to start us on the road to improved transportation systems now. The Ministry of Transportation is located in the Ministries in Accra. Their email address is info@mrt.gov.gh. Don't wait for someone else to act and then complain when nothing gets done.

Ghana is Dirty

Ghana is dirty - I am being deliberately provocative. But in that provocation, there is no exaggeration. Insanitary conditions point to a breakdown along several axes - public health, public logistics, enforcement of law and order, general respect for each other, etc.

I can see no real way that a society can motivate itself to achieve world class standards in anything decent if, that same society is willing to live in filth and grime. Whatever is legal and morally acceptable that can be done to wage a war to deal with sanitation should be done. This is one such small example. But it is an example of people doing something, rather than whining and leaving it at that. I can therefore only congratulate its originators.

by YAW NSARKOH
(photo courtesy of Esi Ansah)

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