By Edward Williams
Hohoe (V/R), June 3, GNA – Mr Selorm Odjoh-Anyomi, Chief Executive Officer of Eden Dew Farms, has called on journalists to champion climate smart agriculture to help address issues regarding nutrition, health and sustainable agri-food systems.
He said climate smart agriculture was a set of agricultural practices, innovation and technologies which simultaneously boosted productivity, enhanced resilience and reduced greenhouse gas emissions but not a diversion from traditional agriculture.
Mr Odjoh-Anyomi during a two-day training workshop aimed at enhancing media capacity on nutrition, health and agri-food for selected media practitioners in the Volta and Oti Regions, said amid issues such as inaccessible arable land and deforestation, home gardening was a solution to food security issues in Ghana.
He said in the past years, there were many non-communicable diseases that emanated from nutrition, especially what people were eating, including foods infused with chemicals causing havoc to one’s health.
“By climate smart agriculture, we are championing the fact that try and grow your own food in the backyard of your home, in your office, in small pots to ensure that they are also giving oxygen into your space and reducing carbon emissions”.
Professor Francis B. Zotor, Director and Trustee of Africa Catalyzing Action for Nutrition (AfriCAN), said the media needed to be involved to understand how to report nutrition issues.
He expressed the hope that through interaction and collaboration, participants would become effective in promoting the nutrition agenda for the Volta and the Oti Regions and by extension to other places.
The training is being organised by the University of Health and Allied Sciences, through the Fred N. Binka School of Public Health (FNBSPH) in collaboration with Women, Media and Change (WOMEC).
Professor Frank Baiden, Principal Investigator, UHAS-NKABOM Mastercard Project and Dean of the Fred N Binka School of Public Health, said NKABOM was a partnership of seven Ghanaian institutions and McGill University with its foundation premised on the spirit of Nkabom, “that we will do more together than as individual institutions.”
He said the UHAS-NKABOM was a $9.8 million grant award from the Mastercard Foundation to the Fred N Binka School of Public Health over the next 10 years.
“The dream of any institution such as ours is to have sustainable funding for its programmes over a long enough time. This award marks a significant watershed in the 12-year history of the school, and indeed of the University”.
Prof Baiden said the Nkabom Partnership was forged to address the problem of graduate unemployment, adding that at FNBSPH, “we feel enormously challenged by the fact that many graduates of our School remain unemployment years after they have graduated”.
He said through support of the Project, the School would make variations in its portfolio of courses and how it was delivered with the mainstreaming of entrepreneurship across all new and existing programmes.
Prof Baiden said stunting was a major yet often forgotten public health challenge of malnutrition and added that stunted growth in babies manifested patently in low height-for-age.
“The damage that stunting does is long-term and manifest subtly in poor mental development, hindered educational attainment and increased risk of chronic diseases. These effects are not that patent, and it appears, this is the reason we have not paid particular attention to stunting which is a human development challenge that we cannot ignore”.
Ms Roseline Ashigbui, Chief Executive Officer of DELCHRIS, said entrepreneurship in public health was important because it encouraged development of innovative solutions to health problems.
She said it also reduced reliance on donor funding by promoting self-sustaining models, expanded career opportunities beyond traditional public health roles, supports the creation of social enterprises and health startups and help entrepreneurs to develop and advocate for health policies that drove systemic change.
GNA
Edited by Maxwell Awumah/Christian Akorlie