The Minister of Health, Joseph Yieleh Chireh, has emphasized the need for Ghanaians to live a healthy lifestyle

The Minister of Health, Joseph Yieleh Chireh, has emphasized the need for Ghanaians to live a healthy lifestyle ..
The Minister of Health, Joseph Yieleh Chireh, has emphasized the need for Ghanaians to live a healthy lifestyle in order to ensure universal healthcare in the country.

He said the country could achieve universal health service delivery and prevent deaths caused by preventable diseases such as cholera, malaria and diarrhea if Ghanaians lived a healthy life.

The minister made this call during the opening ceremony of a three-day national wellness and healthcare conference and exhibition held in Accra.

Speaking on the theme for the occasion, 'A Healthy Productive People Create a National Legacy of wealth', the minister noted that health service personnel would be more effective if they did not have to treat preventable and contagious diseases like cholera, malaria and diarrhea.

He said deaths which resulted from contagious diseases could be prevented if people lived a healthy lifestyle and ensured that their environment was clean.

'No matter the health facility, people will die if we do not take care of our bodies and environment,' he stated.

He said his ministry had been given the mandate to ensure that universal health care was made possible to everyone, hence a series of activities initiated by the ministry to achieve that aim.

'This we are doing by providing financial access to health services as well as training more health personnel to ensure they are skilled and available to everyone at all times,' he noted.

He further called on Ghanaians to take their life seriously by eating healthy foods and exercising as well as keeping their surroundings clean.


Rev. Sam Korankye Ankrah, Chairman of the planning committee of the conference and exhibition, in his address, said solving the problem of quality healthcare delivery should be looked at wholly, as healthcare institutions alone could not solve the problem.

He said the conference was aimed at bringing other sectors together to deliberate on the issue of how to provide quality healthcare delivery to citizens in the country.

'As money is invested into education, job creation, environment, and building of infrastructure, we must also look at how much is needed for the provision of quality health care in the country so that sicknesses such as cholera and malaria can be eradicated from our communities,' he said.

Rev. Korankye Ankrah also expressed the need for the private sector and other government departments to collaborate in order to ensure that quality healthcare was provided.

'This is the reason we have all this personalities from the private sector to discuss the strategies we can take to ensure quality health delivery,' he said.

He observed that healthcare extended from homes to schools, offices, streets, gutters and to the hospital, inviting everyone to get involved in ensuring that communities are sanitary.