Accra, April 7, GNA - Ms Sherry Ayittey, Minister of Environment, Science and Technology, on Wednesday said government will continue to spend 1.5 billion dollars every quarter to support malaria treatment if people don't stop to politicizing the fight to eliminate filth from the country's cities.

She said due to the pressures of urbanisation, governments had failed to meet obligations to provide quality basic infrastructure such as roads, health facilities, schools, quality drinking water and recreational facilities.

Ms Ayittey was speaking at the launch of World Health Day in Accra. The celebration is under the theme: "Urbanisation and Health". Ms Ayittey said negative activities of urban dwellers, which included indiscriminate dumping and burning of plastic waste, vehicular emissions, pollution of water bodies and the indiscriminate building on waterways, had contributed in the emergence and spread of numerous diseases and the occurrences of natural disasters such as perennial floods in the cities.

She said government would institute policies to ban the dumping of electronic waste in the country, saying the current situation where such electronic gadgets were burned openly had contributed to the high rate of reported cancers and respiratory cases in children in the country. Ms Ayittey said government would pursue the urban transport system, the small town water projects and the passage of the environmental sanitation bill which was before Parliament and MEST would soon launch a programme to promote the massive planting of trees in all residential areas to promote the green environment initiative.

She reiterated the need for stronger partnership and collaboration by all stakeholders to achieve the desired results. Dr Daniel Kertesz, World Health Organisation (WHO) Representative to Ghana, said it was estimated that over half the world's population live in cities and by 2030, six out of every 10 people would be city dwellers, with the figure rising to seven out of 10 people by 2050, "a situation which is not different from the case in Ghana." He said various pressures resulting from job unavailability, accommodation, unhealthy diet and lack of physical activity among poor urban dwellers contributed to non-communicable health conditions such as obesity, hypertension, diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. Dr Kertesz said as the world was changing with increases in urbanisation, there was the need for governments and all stakeholders to embrace the fact that there was the need to face the health consequences as well and take action now to ensure that growing cities became healthy as well.

He urged governments to consider health as a human right issue saying its determinants could be positively influenced by carefully planning urban growth to promote constructive population development and contribute to improved health status of the citizenry.

Dr Alfred Okoe Vanderpuije, Accra Metropolitan Chief Executive said the AMA would not relent on efforts to decongest the metropolis and demolish unauthorised structures on waterways. He said this was to ensure good health, safety and prevent disasters that might occur from indiscriminate building in reserved areas and unauthorised structures in the metropolis. He said available statistics indicated that about 50 per cent of the world's population lived in urban settlements, and Accra Metropolis had a population of over four million with an additional floating population of one million entering the city daily to engage in commercial activities.

Dr Vanderpuije said some challenges confronting the AMA as a result of rapid urban growth required the collaborative effort of all stakeholders to be able to combat adverse effects resulting from poor planning of the cities, poor waste management systems, poor road and health infrastructure, schools as well as absence of recreational facilities.

He noted that though cities often offered the lure of better employment, education, and healthcare and contributed a lot to national economies, rapid and often unplanned urban growth had resulted in poverty, environmental degradation and population demands that outstrip service capacity.

The Accra Mayor said these conditions placed human health at risk, citing some of the challenges as substandard housing, air pollution, contaminated drinking water and inadequate sanitation. He noted that the year-long celebrations would create much public awareness on the health challenges associated with urbanisation and the need to address these challenges through proper urban planning and demonstrate the need for local city authorities to take responsibility and urgent action to promote health in urban settings. Dr Vanderpuije said the AMA would play a leading role in implementing activities to commemorate this year's celebration with the declaration of Accra as a Millennium City since January 15, this year and therefore had the responsibility to ensure a comprehensive re-development to an acceptable international standard. He said activities planned include intensification of public education and enforcement of the assembly's bye-laws on waste management, food safety as well as clean-up exercises and encourage the participation of different agencies and groups to ensure lasting health benefits to the citizenry.

Dr. Vanderpuije announced that AMA had developed a seven-pillar vision, which included a city-wide decongestion exercise, a waste to energy plan to deal with the waste management issues, re-configuration of the central business district of the metropolis within a broad framework of the Accra City Renewal Programme as well as the community upgrading under the Millennium City Initiative.

He explained that the Millennium City Initiative was a collaborative project between the City of Accra and the Earth Institute at Colombia University in the USA, which aimed at assisting selected cities across sub-Saharan Africa through research and policy analysis to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). It is also to ensure a comprehensive re-development of the city of Accra to acceptable international standards.

The Accra Mayor called for maximum support and cooperation from the public to help eliminate the negative health implications associated with urbanisation.