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Ghanaians have poor health behaviour – Dr Stella Gyamfi
Though issues pertaining to health are essential and should not be compromised, Ghanaians have been described as people with poor health behaviour.
A Public Health Specialist In- Charge of the Kaneshie Polyclinic, Dr Stella Gyamfi who made the disclosure said “people do not report at the hospital as the first option, but resort to seeking the opinion of relatives and friends to treat perceived ailments.”
“Others visit pharmacies where investigations are carried into their problems and medications are given while the underlying causes of the ailments are not identified,” she said..
She advised that patients should visit the hospital for proper diagnoses to be carried out on them to identify the disease for the appropriate medicine to be administered to them.
She explained that this was contrary to what pertained in advanced countries, where mandatory medical checkup were in place.
Dr Gyamfi said since health workers were worse offenders, the Ministry of Health had instituted a mandatory Peer Review Screening for its staff with a Medical Doctor In-Charge, after which the performance of the staff would be assessed based on the screening result.
Breast cancer awareness
She said the main reason for breast cancer awareness campaign in October was to educate women about the disease and the need to sensitise them for early detection for prompt treatment to be carried out on the patient.
She lamented that a friend of her’s who had her screening 20 years ago and became an advocate of early detection, had passed on this year.
Dr Gyamfi advised women to examine their breasts after they had completed their menses, adding that they should watch out for signs of lumps or swelling in the breast, discharges and changes in the nipples, changes in the colour of the breast, among others.
She commended women groups for the advocacy roles they had played over the years.
She said though women who had attained 50 years and above, those who had their menopause after 55 years, those who work in an environment where radiation takes place, those obese, and ladies who had commenced their menses as early as 12 years, were at a risk of contracting the disease, recent research had indicated that even ladies as young as 25 years had also contracted the disease.
Youth
She has called on the youth to believe in Jesus as their personal Saviour and he would direct them through life.
“As a child of God, find out God’s plan for you in life, pursue it and you will succeed. Success should be looked at from God’s perspective.”
The youth should be mindful of many destructions in life, pursue academic excellence, access God diligently and things would fall in place.
Career and family life
Dr Stella Gyamfi has three children, one is a medical Doctor, another is a Clinical Psychologist and the third is a PhD student of Actuarial Science.
Born in Kumasi to Mr Paul Brandford Gyamfi Senior and Mrs Grace Gyamfi, both Presbyterians, Dr Stella Gyamfi, started Class One when she was five years old at the State Experimental Primary School in Kumasi.
She passed the Common Entrance Examination at the age of 11 and enrolled at Aburi Senior High School and attended from Form One to Upper Sixth.
Eager to atone for the inability of her mother to become a Medical Doctor but settled for a Midwife, Dr Gyamfi, due to misinformation, chose and read Pharmacy at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology for one academic year.
Fortunately, since the determination was there and backed with ability, she assessed Soviet Union Scholarship in 1983 and enrolled to read language for one year, continued to study medicine in Ukraine and successfully completed in 1990.
Dr Gyamfi described the scholarship as very beneficial since many students could not have afforded to study medicine without support from foreign governments.
Poised to broaden her knowledge, she has obtained the following; Certificate in Theology at the Theological Seminary, Legon, 1997-98, Bachelor in Divinity, 1998-2001, Masters in Public Health at the University of Ghana, 200-2001, Masters of Theology, Princeton Theological Seminary, 2004-2005 and PhD in Theology , with Specialty in Theological Ethics, 2013-2018.
Dr Stella Gyaamfi who is an adjunct lecturer has intimated that when she eventually lays down her medical tolls for good, she would prefer to go into full time lecturing.
By Raymond Kyekye
One of the issues we have been grappling with as a nation is corruption, and it has had such a devastating effect on our national development. I have been convinced that until morality becomes the foundation upon which our governance system is built, we can never go forward as a nation.
Our traditional practices, which have shaped our cultural beliefs, have always espoused values that have kept us along the straight and the narrow and have preserved our societies since ancient times.
These are values that frown on negative habits like stealing, cheating, greediness, selfishness, etc. Our grandparents have told us stories of societies where stealing was regarded as so shameful that offenders, when caught, have on a number of instances committed suicide.
In fact, my mother told me of a story where a man who was living in the same village as her mother (my grandmother), after having been caught stealing a neighbour’s cockerel, out of shame committed suicide on a mango tree. Those were the days that shameful acts were an abomination.
Tegare worship, a traditional spiritual worship during which the spirit possesses the Tegare Priest and begins to reveal secrets, was one of the means by which the society upheld African values in the days of my grandmother and the early childhood days of my mother.
Those were the days when the fear of being killed by Tegare prevented people from engaging in anti-social vices. These days, people sleeping with other people’s wives are not uncommon.
These wrongful behaviour was not countenanced at all by Tegare. One was likely going to lose his life on days that Tegare operates, and so unhealthy habits like coveting your neighbour’s wife was a taboo.
Stealing of other people’s farm produce, for instance, could mean certain death or incapacitation of the whole or part of the body in the full glare of everybody. People realised that there were consequences for wrongdoing, and this went a long way to motivate the society to adhere to right values.
Imagine a President being sworn into office and whoever administers the oath says, “Please say this after me: I, Mr. …., do solemnly swear by God, the spirits of my ancestors and the spirits ruling in Ghana, that should I engage in corrupt acts, may I and my family become crippled, may madness become entrenched in my family, may incurable sicknesses and diseases be my portion and that of my family, both immediate and extended.”
Can you imagine a situation where a few weeks afterwards the President goes to engage in corrupt acts and we hear of his sudden demise or incapacitation and confessing that he engaged in corrupt acts before passing or before the incapacitation—and the effect it will have on his successor? I believe we have to critically examine this option to curb corruption.
My grandmother gave me an eyewitness account of one such encounter where a woman died instantly after the Tegare Priest had revealed a wrong attitude she had displayed during the performance on one of the days scheduled for Tegare spirit manifestation.
According to her story, the Priest, after he had been possessed by the spirit, declared that for what the woman had done, he would not forgive her and that he would kill. Instantly, according to my grandmother, the lady fell down suddenly and she died—just like what happened to Ananias and his wife Sapphira in Acts Chapter 5.
NB: ‘CHANGE KOTOKA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT TO KOFI BAAKO
By Laud Kissi-Mensah
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BY ROBERT EKOW GRIMMOND-THOMPSON
