The plan by the Accra Medical Centre to ensure that no patient will have to be flown outside Ghana for medical treatment when all pipeline projects of the AMC are put into service and boost health tourism in Ghana from the sub-region is one of the leading stories in the Ghanaian press on Monday.
The Graphic reports that the Chief Operating Officer of the Accra Medical Centre (AMC), Mr. Moses Clocuh, says no patient would have to be flown outside Ghana for medical treatment when all pipeline projects of the AMC are put into service.
He has consequently projected a boost in health tourism in Ghana from the sub-region and beyond by 2030.
Mr. Clocuh said this when a delegation from Stanbic Bank, led by the Chief Executive, Mr Kwamina Asomaning, visited the new 45-bed wing of the centre.
The facility, located at Ringway Estates, Osu, in Accra, has various amenities that go with the centre’s claim of an efficient customer-oriented healthcare provision.
The project was financed with critical funding support from Stanbic Bank in line with the Standard Bank Group’s sustainable growth agenda through quality healthcare provision.
Mr. Asomaning thanked AMC, which had been in existence since November 2011, for giving the bank the opportunity to be of service, adding that “the relation with Accra Medical Centre is on many fronts.
It’s an important institution for many of us at the bank and in many other respects, serving as a healthcare provider for our staff and key corporate clients. At the same time, this relationship provides an opportunity for our ecosystem strategy to bank the suppliers, distributors and vendors of our key clients.
“We started this business when we saw a void in healthcare provision in the country, and until that void is filled, we shall continue to innovate and forge ahead for excellence. I am very appreciative of the attention and support Stanbic offers AMC because that’s what fuels our growth ambitions,” Mr. Clocuh said.
The newspaper says that Cigarettes contain poisonous chemicals such as ammonia which is used to boost the impact of nicotine in them.
Furthermore, cigarette smoke contains high levels of carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide – the chemical used in killing Jews in the gas chambers in Nazi Germany during World War II.
Notwithstanding these facts, cigarette manufacturers asserted that cigarette is safe to smoke.
In 1967, the then US Surgeon, General William Stewart, stated that the hazards of smoking had “gone beyond the probable to the point of demonstrated fact” and in 1976, F. Byrd, President of the American Cancer Society stated that cigarettes should be regarded as ‘unique’ among legal consumer products in that they posed a health hazard even if used “properly and prudently”
The weight of evidence linking cigarette smoking with coronary heart disease and with pulmonary illness such as lung cancer and emphysema now appears to be an almost universally accepted and noncontroversial view.
More than half of all smokers in the 1940’s up until the mid 1980’s were deceived to believe that smoking did not cause heart attacks; they also did not know that it caused most lung cancers.
Maintaining this ignorance has cost the tobacco industry hundreds of millions of dollars worth of advertisements in public relations.
The tobacco industry has successfully used celebrity advertising to promote consumption by the youth by playing on emotions, without providing objective information for the consumer (youth) to use effectively in evaluating the product.
The Times reports that the African Media and Malaria Research Network (AMMREN), a Pan-African advocacy group of journalists and scientists, has called on governments of malaria endemic countries to invest in the fight against malaria to fill the funding gap.
According to the group, unless countries found innovative ways to mobilise adequate resources to bridge the funding gap, malaria resurgence would likely take more lives in Africa.
This was contained in a statement signed and issued by Dr Charity Binka, Executive Secretary of AMMREN, in Accra yesterday on the occasion of this year’s World Malaria Day.
The theme for the Day is “Zero Malaria Starts with Me – Draw the Line Against Malaria,” a theme which builds on the “Zero Malaria Starts with Me” campaign movement started nearly three years ago.
The theme aims at highlighting the successes of countries around the world and to inspire a new group of countries that have the potential to eliminate the disease by 2025.
“Zero Malaria must start with the presidents. Together we can draw the line against Malaria and the time is now. Certainly, this is not the time for countries with a high burden of malaria to lose ground.
It is important to note that malaria elimination is possible and critical to fighting other current and future diseases that may emerge,” the statement noted.
GIK/APA