Health Essentials
Sick food environment: Poor diets fuelling the rise of NCDs in Ghana
WHEN Dorcas reaches for a chilled bottle of her favourite soft drink after lunch, she rarely considers its long-term effects on her health. For the 29-year-old secretary in Accra, the sweetness is comforting. The tiny print on the label—numbers, percentages and scientific terms—feels too distant to warrant concern.
“I take these drinks because they are less expensive compared to natural fruit juice. They are easy to get. Sometimes the drinks paired with a bun, buff loaf, cookies or biscuits serve as a full meal,” she says.
Nutrition experts, however, warn that a single 300ml bottle of soda can contain as many as nine cubes of sugar, almost twice the recommended daily limit.
“Even when you dilute it, the sugar content doesn’t reduce. Your tongue may not taste it, but your body absorbs every gram,” says Harriett Nuamah Agyemang, Country Director of SEND Ghana, which is leading advocacy for Front-of-Pack Labelling (FOPL) to help consumers make healthier choices.
Rising consumption and growing risk
Professor Richmond Nii Okai Aryeetey, a Public Health Nutrition Expert at the University of Ghana, says a recent study shows that one-third of Ghanaian adolescents consume sugary drinks at least once a day.
“Before the end of 2025, Ghana has already purchased almost US$1.3 billion worth of sugar-sweetened beverages. There is not enough data, but we know enough to see that consumption is high and rising, especially among the youth,” he indicates.
According to the Ghana Living Standards Survey, households spend nearly three per cent of their income—about GH¢2,200 annually—on sugary drinks.
Prof. Aryeetey says diets dominated by sugar, salt and fat, common in Ultra-Processed Foods (UPFs), are driving increases in hypertension, diabetes and heart disease.
“Ultra-processing takes food to another level. You combine ingredients that are intensely refined, and add industrial formulations, colours, flavours, sweeteners, that never appear in home cooking,” he explains. He identifies doughnuts, pizza, ketchup, burgers, and fizzy drinks as common UPFs.
The numbers behind the burden
The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that non-communicable diseases (NCDs), including stroke, heart disease, diabetes and cancers, account for 48 per cent of all deaths in Ghana.
In 2019, the age-standardised mortality rate for major NCDs stood at 750 per 100,000 males and 563 per 100,000 females. Projections indicate that by 2034, nearly 41 per cent of all deaths could be linked to complications from four major NCDs: stroke, heart attack, heart failure and chronic kidney disease, largely driven by unhealthy diets.
Ghana Health Service (GHS) data shows that in 2024 alone, more than 584,000 people were diagnosed with hypertension and nearly 200,000 with diabetes. In the first half of 2025, a further 255,000 hypertension cases and 88,000 diabetes cases were recorded.
Public health experts describe this as evidence of a “sick food environment”, where consumers are surrounded by cheap, aggressively marketed products high in salt, fat and sugar.
Convenience foods and changing lifestyles
From instant noodles and tomato paste to packaged snacks and fizzy drinks, UPFs have become staples in homes, schools, and workplaces.
Ms Agyemang links the trend to changing lifestyles.
“People spend hours in traffic and get home late. They go for the quick options canned, instant or fried. But the long-term cost to their health is enormous,” she says.
Ghana’s current labelling regulations require nutritional information to be placed on the back of packages, often in fine print that many consumers struggle to interpret.
“Even educated consumers struggle with it. For the ordinary person, it’s even more confusing,” she adds.
Front-of-Pack Labeling
Several countries, including South Africa, Nigeria, Mexico and Chile, have adopted Front-of-Pack Labelling, using simple symbols or colours to indicate high levels of salt, sugar or fat.
The WHO says FOPL enables consumers to identify healthier options at a glance and encourages manufacturers to reformulate products in order to avoid warning labels.
“It doesn’t only guide shoppers. It forces companies to compete on health, not just price,” Ms Agyemang notes.
At Rawlings Park in Accra, food vendor, Asia Bintu, says she checks only expiry dates.
“I don’t understand the numbers and those tiny inscriptions. Canned foods are cheaper and easier to cook,” she says.
Advocates say such responses reflect low food literacy, underscoring the need for public education and regulation.
Health system under pressure
Maxwell Bisda Konla, Principal Dietician at the University of Ghana Hospital, says Ghana’s progress in improving national nutrition has slowed.
“Obesity, hypertension and other NCDs are rising at an alarming rate as Ghanaians shift from traditional fibre-rich foods to highly processed meals, sugary drinks and refined carbohydrates,” he says.
Heart disease, kidney failure, and liver complications now feature prominently in mortality data.
He calls for stronger policies to limit the importation and marketing of unhealthy foods while promoting local alternatives such as brown rice, whole grains, fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds.
Schools as a focal point
Labram Musah, National Coordinator of the Ghana NCD Alliance, says schools are critical to reversing current trends.
“Children are increasingly exposed to unhealthy diets, especially in urban areas. What they eat in schools shapes their lifelong habits,” he says.
He advocates regulation of foods sold in and around schools, and the introduction of practical nutrition education, including school gardens and healthy meal plans.
“It’s not enough to tell children what to eat. We must make healthy options available and affordable. Imagine if every school had a small garden, it would change how children think about food.”
Mr Musah also urges the integration of FOPL into Ghana’s broader NCD prevention strategy, alongside salt reduction, sugar taxes and restrictions on marketing UPFs to children.
Evidence from Africa
A randomised controlled trial in Kenya involving 2,198 shoppers found that FOPL significantly improved participants’ ability to identify sugar, salt and saturated fat in packaged foods and reduced intentions to buy unhealthy products, particularly when black warning labels were used.
A South African study similarly found that simplified Front-Of-Pack Labels were more effective than detailed back-of-pack tables in helping consumers identify unhealthy foods.
Prevention as priority
The WHO says clear labelling can drive product reformulation and reduce diet-related diseases over time.
“Reading a label could be the difference between good health and a lifetime of medication. If we don’t act now, we will keep spending millions treating preventable diseases,” Ms Agyemang warns.
For Ghana, a stronger focus on prevention could reduce pressure on health facilities already managing growing NCD caseloads.
Nutrition advocates say introducing Front-of-Pack Labelling would strengthen Ghana’s response to NCDs by making nutritional quality visible at the point of purchase and supporting healthier decision-making.
Advancing SDG Three
The rising burden of diet-related NCDs poses a significant challenge to achieving Sustainable Development Goal Three, which aims to reduce premature deaths from NCDs through prevention and treatment.
Improving Ghana’s food environment through clearer labelling, salt and sugar reduction policies and better access to affordable healthy foods is considered essential to meeting these targets.
By prioritising preventive nutrition policies and healthier diets, Ghana could reduce avoidable illness, ease pressure on the health system and advance efforts to ensure healthy lives and well-being for all.
-GNA
Health Essentials
Why Ghana’s ‘no bed syndrome’ is a policy failure, not a clinical failure – Part one
OVER the years, No Bed Syndrome has been a major headache in Ghana’s health system. People have expressed different views and today my friend and classmate Professor Jonathan Laryea takes his turn and makes extremely important contributions that should start a deep conversation.
Professor Laryea writes;
Every few months, Ghana wakes up to a familiar, tragic headline. A prominent citizen, a pregnant mother, or a young accident victim has died in the back of an ambulance. They didn’t die because medical science failed them; they died because they spent their “Golden Hour”, the critical window between life and death, touring the gates of hospitals that had no room to receive them.
The public outcry follows a predictable script: anger at the hospitals, calls for “compassion” from doctors and nurses, and a frantic directive from the minister of health and parliament. A few years ago, the directive was simple: No hospital can turn a patient away. The result? We didn’t create more beds; we simply moved the crisis from the ambulance floor to the hospital floor. That also created another outrage.
It is time to stop blaming the frontline workers and start looking at the math. The “No Bed Syndrome” is not a failure of healthcare workers; it is a failure of a country that has not matched its resources to its population growth. Most recently, an engineer lost his life after being involved in an accident. The ambulance drove around for hours before getting to Korle Bu. Though the outcome was sad, I would venture to say that even if Korle Bu had a bed to treat this patient, the outcome would likely have been the same given the time between the accident and when the ambulance got to Korle Bu. When you have a patient exsanguinating, time is of the essence. Even if he got to the right place in time, the other question is would they have enough blood to resuscitate him without requiring family to donate prior to administering the blood?
The impossible equation
Consider the capital city. Accra has a population of approximately 2.9 – 4 million people, depending on who you ask. To serve this massive, high-density population, there are fewer than 400 dedicated emergency room beds across major public facilities.
Let’s do the math: that is roughly one emergency bed for every 10,000 citizens. That is not a recipe for success. When a system is constantly operating at 110 per cent capacity, “No Bed” isn’t an excuse, it is a physical reality. When we force doctors and nurses to treat patients on the floor, we aren’t “solving” the problem; we are compromising hygiene, dignity, and clinical outcomes. You cannot perform a high-quality resuscitation on a crowded floor. This is a capacity issue. We cannot expect this issue to fix itself. There is the need to increase emergency capacity across the metropolis and indeed across the country.
A system in need of coordination
The second failure is logistical. Ghana has made strides in developing a National Ambulance Service (NAS), but we have failed to give that service a “brain” to coordinate it. Currently, an ambulance driver picks up a patient and begins a desperate, manual search for a vacancy. They drive from Ridge Hospital to 37 Military Hospital to Korle-Bu, burning through the patient’s oxygen and time. In an era of digital transformation, it is inexcusable that our ambulances do not have a real-time, cloud-based dashboard showing exactly where the nearest available specialised bed is located. An ambulance without a coordinated dispatch system is just a high-speed hearse.
Beyond the furniture: The “emergency mindset”
A bed, however, is just a piece of furniture if it is not backed by an emergency pathway. The true “No Bed Syndrome” includes a lack of specialised systems. In modern medicine, the “Golden Hour” dictates that, for example:
• For a heart attack: We must be able to perform cardiac catheterization within 60 to 90 minutes.
• For a stroke: We must have the ability to perform a CT scan and administer clot-busting medication within an hour.
In Ghana, if you have a stroke or heart attack, your survival depends more on your luck and your traffic route than on a standardised medical protocol. If a patient reaches a bed but the CT scanner is broken or there is no Cardiac Catheterisation Laboratory or the Catheterisation laboratory is unstaffed/unresourced, the “syndrome” has simply moved from the ambulance to the ward. We have failed to develop the specialized “hubs” required to treat these time-sensitive killers. Accident cases are even worse. The ability to give blood emergently to exsanguinating patients does not exist. Some patients need immediate surgery; for example, patients with gunshot wounds and stab wounds. Sending such patients to a facility where they cannot do emergency surgery is unhelpful.
We must develop a system for triaging patients to the right facilities. There is a need to do a thorough evaluation of our healthcare delivery system and redesign a system that works for Ghanaians. It looks like we have done a patchwork of modifications to what Governor Guggisberg left us and after 69 years of self-governance, we have failed to redesign a system that works for modern-day realities.
Prof. Jonathan Laryea is a Professor of Surgery at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock, Arkansas. He is board certified in General Surgery, Colorectal Surgery and Clinical Informatics.
He is a graduate of the University of Ghana Medical School (Class of 1997).
Health Essentials
Children Believe, Norsaac present medicines, medical equipment to three Health Directorates
THE Northern, Upper East and Savannah Regional Health Directorates have taken delivery of various medicines and medical equipment to improve care for pregnant/lactating mothers, adolescent girls and children under five years.
The medicines and medical equipment, worth GH¢1.6 million, were procured with funding support from the Canadian Government through Global Affairs Canada.
They included Combined Iron (III) Hydroxide Polymaltose and Folic Acid – 5,500 Boxes, Mebendazole (Wormalex 400mg) – 10,000 Packs, Albendazole (400mg) – 20,000 Packs, Combine Ferrous Sulphate and Folic Acid (Folidyn Tab mp) – 2880 cartons, Tarring Weighing Scale- 18 pieces, Digital Thermometer – 108 pieces, and Height Rod in CMS/Feet HOM Stadiometer – 27 pieces.
The rest were Blood Pressure Monitor Digital, Andon- 27 pieces, Ultrasonic Pocket Doppler, 1.5v Sonotrax Basic – 9 pieces, Glucose meters – 54 pieces, Glucose meter stripes (50’s)- 500 pieces, Delivery set (used for facility-based delivery) – 27 pieces, Hb Testing System/URIT -12 – 36 pieces, Hb Test Stripes (50’s) – 800 pieces, Weighing Scale, Hanging (Salter) HOM- 27 pieces.
Some 96,374 individuals comprising pregnant/lactating mothers, adolescent girls and children under five years in nine districts in the three regions are expected to benefit from the medicines and the medical equipment.
A total of 54 health facilities in the nine districts, namely Bole, Sawla-Tuna-Kalba, East Gonja, Tolon, Kumbungu, Nanumba South, Builsa South, Kassena-Nankana West and Kassena-Nankana North, are to benefit from the supplies.
They were donated by Children Believe, an international NGO, under the Championing Nutrition and Gender Equality (CHANGE) project, which is funded by Global Affairs Canada.
The CHANGE project is being implemented in partnership with Norsaac; the national implementing partner, amongst other governmental agencies.
The overall objective of the project is to improve nutrition for the poorest and most marginalised, especially women and adolescent girls.
Madam Esenam Kavi De Souza, the Country Director, Children Believe, speaking to hand over the medicines and the medical equipment to the authorities of the Ghana Health Service (GHS) at the Regional Medical Stores in Tamale, said it was geared towards achieving the project’s commitment to improve women’s leadership and control resources for community and individual gender equitable nutrition practices.
The authorities of the GHS in the Upper East and Savannah Regions also received their share of the donated items in their respective regions.
Madam De Souza said the gesture followed assessments conducted with the GHS to identify the most critical healthcare needs in the targeted communities. She said the intervention was designed to ensure that the support would make a meaningful difference in healthcare delivery for the poorest and most marginalised populations in the targeted districts.
Dr Chrysantus Kubio, the Northern Regional Director, GHS, who received the items, said they would significantly improve health service delivery in the beneficiary districts in the region.
He said as part of the project, motorbikes and laptops were also supplied to the districts to facilitate the work of health personnel and improve data analysis for health services.
He lauded the project saying such partnerships were crucial in supporting vulnerable populations, who faced financial barriers to healthcare and expressed appreciation to Global Affairs Canada and the implementing partners for their support. —GNA
