Tema-Ghana, May 8, CDA Consult – The International Maritime Hospital (IMaH), Accident and Emergency Specialist, has asked individuals not to hide their diseases from their families, friends, and relatives, since doing so could save their lives during a crisis.
Head of the Accident and Emergency Department at the International Maritime Hospital (IMaH), Dr. Mrs. Barbara Ayesha Anawana Karbo who gave the advice also expressed concern that some people, particularly men, refuse to disclose their ailments and medication information to their families, spouses, and children, making it difficult for medical officials to get accurate information in times of emergency.
Dr. Mrs. Karbo made the remarks at the weekly “Your Health! Our Collective Responsibility,” a Ghana News Agency Tema Regional Office initiative aimed at promoting health-related communication and providing a platform for health information dissemination in order to influence personal health choices through improved health literacy.
The Ghana News Agency’s Tema Regional Office established the public health advocacy platform “Your Health! Our Collective Responsibility” to investigate the elements of four health communication approaches: informing, instructing, persuading, and urging.
An Accident and Emergency Specialist, Dr. Mrs. Karbo, steered a presentation on “First Aid at Home and Basic Life Support.” She continued, “When this occurs, clinicians must rely on educated guesses rather than examining a specific scenario and providing timely treatment.”
She stated, for example, that asthmatic patients must inform their close friends, relatives, and colleagues where their inhalers are and what to do for them during an attack, and that a diabetic patient can be saved by a colleague who knows that anything containing sugar can be given to him when he shows signs of low sugar to save his or her life.
Dr. Mrs. Karbo also pushed patients to teach everyone around them about their condition’s safety mechanisms, stating that if they were the only ones who knew, it would be worthless to them when they were in a position of aid and couldn’t put what they knew into practise.
She also encouraged that all businesses and schools have first aid kits stocked with the supplies needed to perform first aid before heading to the hospital.
She suggested that the first aid box be assigned to a single person to ensure accountability and the preservation of the items to ensure their effectiveness whenever needed.
She suggested that an office first aid box include a glucometer, a thermometer, diarrhoea medication, anti-malaria medication, plaster, gauze, bandages, and some pain killers, notably paracetamol and ibuprofen.
According to the Accident and Emergency Specialist, the glucometer would help diabetic workers, while the diarrhoea would help prevent the loss of excess water from the body as the body turns to lose its water during such conditions, forcing it to take the water contained in the blood, which could lead to other emergencies.
Dr. Mrs. Karbo stated that first aid boxes for schools must also include suppository and syrup paracetamol, various types of thermometers, plaster, gauze, and bandages, and that those in charge of the first aid box must be trained and given a chart, particularly on what to look for when checking children’s temperatures.
“GNA-Tema Your Health! Our Collective Responsibility” is a public health advocacy platform designed to examine the four techniques of health communication: informing, teaching, persuading, and encouraging according to Mr. Francis Ameyibor, Tema Regional Manager of Ghana News Agency.
According to Mr. Ameyibor, the GNA platform serves as a fantastic communication route for medical practitioners to educate the public about healthy practises and other general health concerns through the weekly health conversation forum.
