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www.ghanaweb.com:
General News of Wednesday, 20 December 2006
Keep to
healthy lifestyles -Minister
Breman Asikuma (C/R), Dec. 20, GNA- Major Courage
Quashigah, Minister of Health on Tuesday, called on all
Ghanaians to keep to healthy lifestyles by eating the
right food, exercising their bodies and keeping their
environment clean.
He stated that Ghanaians would stay alive for long and
healthy if they refrained from over reliance on drugs to
cure themselves of sicknesses and rather prevent
themselves against the causes of sicknesses.
Major Quashigah made the call at a ceremony to launch a
pilot training programme on Regenerative Health and
Nutrition Project (RHNP), at Breman Asikuma, capital of
Asikuma-Odoben-Brakwa (AOB) district, in the central
region.
The RHNP is a new health policy developed by the
Ministry of Health, which emphasizes on health promotion
and prevention, and aims at improving the health status
of Ghanaians through promoting healthy lifestyles with
emphasis on nutrition.
The minister said as part of activities for the pilot
programme, the Ministry of Health intends to collaborate
with the district assemblies to establish change agents
in the districts to facilitate the promotion of healthy
lifestyles and nutrition.
Major Quashigah stated that the policy was adopted after
understudying the Israelis who live long and healthy,
because of their peculiar lifestyles, which is in
conformity with eating the right food, exercising
regularly and keeping their environment clean.
According to him he has seen a 74-year old woman taking
part in a running exercise in Israel and that he was
also shown a community in Israel, which had not recorded
a single death, in a period of 38 years. He said it was
in this regard that a number of specialists from Israel
have been brought into the country, to spend a year, to
assist in the education of Ghanaians about the RHNP and
the creation of awareness on its benefits, to facilitate
its acceptance by all.
The minister reiterated that if Ghana were to attain a
middle-income status by the year 2015, it was imperative
that the nation moved away from spending huge sums of
money on drugs and rather save such money for
investments.
According to him, Ghana spends more than 500 million
dollars on malaria treatment alone in a year, and called
for a new paradigm on health from curative to
preventive, adding that the launching would be
replicated in all the 138 districts to popularize it.
Major Quashigah, also had a meeting with the management
and staff of Our Lady of Grace Hospital, to know their
problems, among which were, the lack of a bus to convey
staff to and from hospital and insufficient staff
accommodation.
Mr P. C. Appiah Ofori, Member of Parliament of AOB
constituency, for his part, said all the efforts
government was making to develop the nation would be a
fruitless venture if people did not keep to healthy
lifestyles and lived long to benefit from those
development projects. He in this regard advised the
people to refrain from drug abuse and the use of hard
drugs, whilst committing themselves to hygiene and
environmental cleanliness to prolong their lives.
Mr Prince Emmanuel, head of the Israeli delegation,
noted that Ghana has always been in the forefront of
everything that is good in Africa, and that even though
they came from Israel they feel proud to be associated
with Ghana in the dissemination of the RHNP in the
country. Mr Emmanuel Adjei Domson, district chief
executive of AOB expressed gratitude to the ministry of
health for choosing the district as the place to launch
the pilot project, and promised that all efforts would
be made to facilitate its popularity and acceptance.
Earlier, an early morning walk dubbed, "the walk of
life", led by the minister was undertaken alongside some
health workers, teachers, assembly members and a
cross-section of the members of the public, through some
streets of the town for 30 minutes, bearing placards.
Some of the placards read, "exercise at least three
times a week, exercise your body by turning, running and
skipping, take some rest it is good for your heart,
drink at least seven glasses of water a day, you are
what you eat, and eat a lot of fruits and vegetables".
Later, Dr Elimele Ben Israel, a naturopathic doctor from
Israel, talking to newsmen said the 15-member
delegation, would be traveling to all parts of the
country to share information on RHNP with the people. He
said during their tour they would encourage the
establishment of health clubs among the people, among
others, and also urged them to live healthy lifestyles
in order to live long and healthy.
Talking to the press too, Dr Edward Addai, director for
policy planning and evaluation of the ministry of
health, stated that health is not about what is
happening in the hospitals, and advised people to live
the life that would help them stay out of hospital.
According to him, people tended to weaken their bodies
with what they ate and how they lived, adding that,
people got malaria because their bodies were too weak to
fight the malaria parasites. Dr Addai, who is also the
RHNP project co-ordinator, therefore urged the people to
ensure that their environment was always clean,
stressing that, "anytime you looked at your environment,
you should know that your life and healthy survival
depended on it".
Source: GNA
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JERUSALEM
- Tired of escalating fuel prices? Is filling up at the
station leaving you deflated? The answer to your dilemma
– run your automobile on vegetable oil. That is what the
Hebrew Israelites are proposing. Dr. Baruch Ben Yehudah
of the community’s Washington, D.C.-based company,
Plantroleum, is visiting Dimona to demonstrate the
viability of this technology. The community envisions a
partnership between Plantroleum and MASHAV, the Israel
Organization for International Cooperation and
Development to assist energy strapped countries and
enhance Israel’s image abroad.
