Prof. Aikins signing a copy of her book
Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Food & Drugs Authority (FDA), Delese Mimi Darko, last Tuesday launched a book that addresses the condition of chronic non-communicable diseases (NCD) from a psychological perspective.
The 90-page book titled ‘Curing Our Ills: The Psychology of Chronic Disease Risk, Experiences & Care In Africa’ was situated within the context of understanding persons with NCD, relatives of NCD sufferers and care providers to persons with NCD.
It also proffers practical solutions drawn from countries that have successfully implemented NCD intervention with the aim of reducing chronic disease risk and improving the quality of long-term experience and care.
The book was inspired by an inaugural lecture delivered on June 30, 2016, at the University of Ghana (UG) by the author, Prof. Ama de-Graft Aikins, whose research primarily focused on the burden of Africa’s chronic NCD, experiences and representations of chronic physical and mental illnesses, as well as the social psychology of knowledge production in African settings.
At the book launch in Accra, Mrs. Darko indicated the worldwide phenomenon of urbanisation, changing lifestyles and sophistication have created a lot of ills in the society, which need to be managed well.
One of the ways to do that, she said, was through awareness creation that would educate Ghanaians on the need to adopt healthy lifestyles.
“We have a lot of fast food restaurants that are springing up. We have a lot of shisha joints that are springing up. As a country, we gave up smoking so now a day you don’t have a lot of people smoking in Ghana. You go to the universities, shisha is rampant, you go to the night clubs there is a lot of alcohol,” she disclosed.
Prof. Aikins, who is also the Dean of International Programmes & Professor of Social Psychology at the Regional Institute for Population Studies, UG, emphasised the need for research, highlighting that “research allows us to understand our problems, figure out what the causes of our problems are and also allows us to find out whether our problems are unique to our social context.”
She, therefore, called on fellow researchers to pay more attention to men healthcare, as global mortality trends have shown men die earlier than women.
Some reasons, she attributed to such a phenomenon, is that “men don’t take care of themselves, they feel invincible. And when they are ill, they overlook it.”
By Issah Mohammed