Dr Annan said some diseases do not necessarily portray any symptoms at the onset stage and the only way for us to know our full health status is to attend check-ups.

She made the call when she led a team of health professionals to undertake a health screening exercise organised by FBNBank Ghana, a subsidiary of First Bank of Nigeria Limited as part of its Corporate Responsibility Sustainability Week celebrations (CR&S Week).

The exercise which was held at Santa Maria, a suburb of Accra and Suame in Kumasi, saw hundreds of people receiving screening and treatment for a wide range of conditions.

She said there was the need to always know one's health status in order to be in a better position to deal with conditions that might prove fatal if unattended to.

On her part, Dr Ellen Konadu Antwi-Agyei, an optometrist at Optical Express Eye Centre in Accra spoke of the immense benefits such an exercise presented to beneficiaries.

"Most people in the community suffer from a wide range of diseases but they do not come out, so until you do such exercises, you are unable to fish them out," she said, adding that "A lot of eye diseases for instance do not have symptoms and thus anyone suffering from some of these eye diseases might not feel anything until the conditions reach advanced stages that rectifying such conditions become difficult."

Dr Antwi-Agyei commended FBNBank for the exercise and appealed to the Bank to consider rolling out such exercises at least twice every year for maximum impact.

Mr William Neequaye, the Head of Commercial Banking at FBNBank Ghana Limited, said the programme was driven to amplify the culture of "Employee Giving and Volunteering Programme" with a focus on reinforcing the values of the bank's SPARK (Start Performing Acts of Random Kindness) initiative.

"We, as a bank, can only thrive in a healthy society and thus we consider the health needs of our customers and the general public as an important aspect of socio-economic development and our business," Mr Neequaye said.

"This exercise is our way of helping our customers and the general public receive medical care to enable them live healthy lifestyles," he added.

The FBNBank CR&S Week was marked in Ghana, Nigeria and in other countries where First Bank of Nigeria Limited has footprints such as in The Gambia, Guinea, Senegal, Serra Leone, DR Congo and the United Kingdom.

This was contained in a statement from the bank and copied to the Ghana News Agency, which said more than 400 lives were directly impacted at the medical outreach and health screening.