Daily Heritage July 17

Quake Edition 111.qxp_Layout 1 7/14/17 7:58 PM Page 6
How to
deal with
snoring
• Change your sleep position
Lying on your back makes the base of
your tongue and soft palate collapse to
the back wall of your throat, causing a
vibrating sound during sleep. Sleeping
on your side may help prevent this.
• Lose weight
Weight loss helps some people but
not everyone. ‘Thin people snore, too,’
if you've gained weight and started
snoring and did not snore before you
gained weight, weight loss may help.
• Avoid alcohol
Alcohol and sedatives reduce the
resting tone of the muscles in the back
of your throat, making it more likely
you'll snore. Drinking alcohol four to
five hours before sleeping makes snoring
worse.
• Practice good sleep hygiene
Poor sleep habits (also known as
poor sleep ‘hygiene’) can have an effect
similar to that of drinking alcohol.
Working long hours without enough
sleep, for example, means when you finally
hit the sack you're overtired. You
sleep hard and deep, and the muscles
become floppier, which creates snoring.
• Open nasal passages
If snoring starts in your nose, keeping
nasal passages open may help. It allows
air to move through slower.
Imagine a narrow garden hose with
water running through. The narrower
the hose, the faster the water rushes
through.
WWW.DAILYHERITAGE.COM.GH
DAILY HERITAGE FRIDAY, JULY 17, 2017
&Env.
Scientists develop
new TB drug
• To reduce length of treatment
BY CHRISTABEL ADDO
SCIENTISTS HAVE
developed a new
drug for tuberculosis
(TB) which would reduce
the length of
treatment from the
current period of 24 months to
nine.
Dr Paula I. Fujiwara, the Scientific
Director of the International
Union against TB and
Lung Disease, at a media briefing
in Accra, said the new treatment
regimen was more
effective than previous ones.
She said further researches
were going on, to produce other
new TB drugs that would further
reduce the treatment period
to one month.
The briefing was part of the
activities of the on-going 20th
Africa Union Conference on
Lung Health, being hosted by
the Ministry of Health and the
Ghana Society for the Prevention
of Tuberculosis and Lung
diseases in Accra.
She said considering the
trend of multi-drug resistant
TB, there was the need for scientists,
researchers and pharmaceutical
institutions to build
stronger partnerships, for the
development of new diagnostics,
drugs and innovative technologies
to combat the
epidemic.
Africa, she said, had taken
the lead to battle drug-resistant
TB through strengthened research
activities, and called on
governments to support with
sustained budgetary allocations
for research and other purposes.
Dr Fujiwara said Africa’s
challenge was, however, not the
number of drugs developed,
but rather awareness and
knowledge of the disease as
• Dr Paula I. Fujiwara, the Scientific Director of the
International Union against TB and Lung Disease
highly contagious, and the need
to support each other to prevent
its further spread by encouraging
those affected to
report early for diagnosis and
treatment, rather than stigmatising
them.
She said there was currently
a huge missing gap with regard
to the number of unreported
TB cases in Africa, attributable
partly to the issue of stigma,
and there was an urgent need to
find these missing cases in order
to achieve the needed impact of
ending the epidemic on the
continent by 2035.
She appealed for an extensive
media support in public
campaigns and education on the
free access to care and treatment
of TB and other information
on the disease, in order to
end the epidemic by 2035.
She also spoke about the 3P-
Project that involves a cocktail
of drugs for the treatment of
TB and therefore
the need to
“Push, Pull and
Pool” together
efforts, expertise
and resources
from all
angles, to address
the problems
with
regards to the
development of
sustainable regimen
for curative
purposes.
She said
under the 3Pproject,
it was
expected that
some incentives
be given to
pharmaceutical
companies to
cover cost, to
ensure lower
prices of TB
drugs.
Dr Muyabala Munachitombwe-Muna,
the President of
the Union Africa Region,
stressed the need to intensify efforts
to eliminate stigmatisation,
which was the main cause for
the present gap in the missing
TB cases in Africa.
He said one of the major
ways to address stigma was to
change the language used to describe
and discuss TB, giving
examples as “TB Control, Suspected
TB Patients and Deadly
disease”, which incriminated affected
persons and presented
them as some sort of criminals
or outcasts, who must be made
to face some kind of trials.
He said more public education
must be carried out, to expand
knowledge on available
treatment, early diagnosis and
care.
NGOs launch charter to support
Ghana’s healthcare delivery
NON-STATE ACTORS (NSAs) in
Health have launched a charter that
marks the coming together of all health
non-governmental organisations operating
in Ghana, to unite under one umbrella
and help provide health services
to Ghanaians.
The launch of the Charter also allows
NSAs to well position themselves
to assist the government in pursuing
health development agenda as ascribed
by the World Health Organisation
(WHO), through advocacy and proper
monitoring of health services.
At a media launch of the Charter in
Accra, Mr Louis Agbe, a consultant,
said the formation of the NSA platform
fell in line with WHO’s new
framework that sought to strengthen its
engagement with NSAs due to the role
they had been playing in providing critical
health services to the people and reducing
the disease burden.
Working with
development partners
Mr Agbe said under the country coordinating
mechanism of the global
health fund, there were programmes
that allow NSAs together with state actors
to work with development partners
in improving the health sector.
The three partners would work together
to demand accountability of duty
bearers.
Mr Agbe said in particular, priority
issues to be tackled under the partnership
would include universal health coverage,
primary health care, heath
financing, procurement in the health
sector, quality and standards and governance.
He said the issues of malaria, Persons
Living with HIV and AIDs
(PLWA), and TB, among others, would
also be looked at.
He explained that the Charter
would, therefore, enable the NSAs to
generate the evidence necessary to work
with in achieving a resilience and sustainable
health system that delivered
quality health care for all.
•Some patience going through health screening
Unity platform
Mrs Cecilia Senoo, Executive Director
of Hope for Future Generation,
said her organisation and the Society for
Women in AIDS in Africa Clikgold and
the West Africa AIDS Foundation decided
to lead the unity platform so they
could have a louder voice to champion
the cause of the underprivileged and
the vulnerable in society.
She said the Charter would empower
NGOS in Health to carry out
their advocacy work and partner the
government in providing for the needs
of society.
She said with the Charter now in
place, the NSAs would be gathering
data on existing situation and issues, including
the alleged issue of PLWAs
being given expired Anti-retroviral
drugs at the Tema General Hospital,
and the Government’s failure in providing
counterpart funding as part of its
mandate and commitment to health
care.
Revisit Central
Medical Store case
She said the issue of the fire outbreak
that occurred at the Central Medical
Store at Tema and burnt all
medicines and medical equipment
would also be revisited to allow the
NSAs to know what the government
was doing about the situation to restock
the Centre with the required medicines.
The of Chief of Party of John
Snow International Inc., Dr Henry
Nagai, said the role of NSAs was very
important since they work hard through
advocacy to complement the government’s
development agenda.
He asked the NSAs to continue to
work to ensure that the public systems
worked efficiently to ensure the safety
of the citizenry. GNA