Award winning musician and philanthropist Okyeame Kwame has been celebrated over the years for amazing musician and his advocacy against the viral Hepatitis B disease.
This year, OK Foundation in collaboration with MDS-Lancet Laboratories and Ghana Health Services celebrated the world Hepatitis day on the 28 of July in a grand style. The program was pre-loaded with two weeks of radio engagement, TV interviews, and News Paper publications among other media routines.
On Saturday, 28 July, the OK Foundation organized a walk, cycling and aerobics activity in the morning at the Silver Star Tower at the airport city, Accra, which was followed with free Hepatitis B screening and free vaccination.
The event commenced at 6am prompt; having thousands of people, consisting of Fans of the authentic Ghanaian musician, the top notched stars, the Ghana Armed Forces, Ghana Police Services, Ministry of Health, Ghana Health Services, Red Cross Service, Nurses, NGOs and Volunteers among many other people from several organizations came out in their numbers to walk to signify that Ghana is ready to fight Hepatitis till it is no more in the country.
This year’s screening and vaccination recorded the screening of 280 people, but the alarming thing was that, unprecedented amount of 20% tested positive and this according to Okyeame Kwame’s foundation has never happened before.
The foundation is really shocked that in spite of the entire advocacy and all the work to fight the viral Hepatitis, the rampant rate is still flying high. Okyeame Kwame upon observing the high rate stated, the government, most importantly the ministry of health must do more to make sure that number of death caused by Hepatitis related cancers can decrease.
The ministry of health must organize stakeholders again; assemble all NGOs fighting the deadly Hepatitis together, as well as drugs/medication importers, doctors who are investigation Hepatitis and researchers who are organizing data must come together to have a holistic strategy that can combat Hepatitis forever.
The Ghana Ministry of Health must do more, for as it stands; the prevalence rate is going high.