The NCD including cancers, diabetes and stroke among others have become common diseases, which formed about 45 per cent of the death rates in the country, which called for pragmatic efforts to reverse the trend and to improve health conditions of Ghanaians.

Speaking at the opening ceremony of a one-day training workshop for 20 partici­pants from Kpando and Ho Municipality, Central Tongu and Adaklu districts on improved lifestyles and advocacy on NCD at Adaklu-Kodzobi in the Adaklu District of the Volta Region yesterday, a facilitator and an official of GhNCDA, Mr Labram Musah, said the workshop was designed to train the participants who would also inturn train others in their communities.

Mr Musah continued that the objective of the workshop was to create the needed awareness on NCD to ensure that stigma and loss of confidence among patients would be reduced, and asked the partici­pants to take the workshop seriously.

He said the GhNCDA had alliance and networked in the Greater

 Accra Region, Ashanti, and Western North regions and partially in the Eastern Region and soon the Volta Region would become part of the region of alliance to intensify education among the public on the need to reduce NCDs, which mostly occurred through poor lifestyle.

Mr Musah therefore appealed to the gov­ernment to invest much in prevention of non-communicable diseases in the country, and lauded government’s efforts at includ­ing dialysis service in the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS).

He explained that GhNCDA was an umbrella body of 15 different organisa­tions which tried to advocate on NCDs and embarked on regular education on lifestyle changes that would improve on their heath and enable them to lead healthy lives to contribute meaningfully to national devel­opment.

The Executive Director of Stroke Associ­ation Support Network-Ghana (SASNET), Mr Ebenezer Adams, said his outfit had collaborated with the Ministry of Health, Ghana Health Service (GHS), academia, and other partners in the communities in the promotion of healthy lifestyle of persons living with NCDs.

This he said would go a long way to pro­mote quality and healthy life among Ghana­ians, saying diabetes, stroke, cancer among others were diseases that mostly affected the rich in the past but such diseases had no boundaries in recent times, therefore the education to create awareness among the people would help in achieving the Sustain­able Development Goal three (SDG3).

The Chief of Adaklu-Kodzobi, Togbe Degbladze commended the organisers of the programme and appealed to the Ho Mu­nicipal Assembly to improve on the facilities at the Community-Based Health Planning Services compound (CHPS).