GMA launches news magazine

spread Thurs April 10

Story Rebecca Quaicoe Duho
THE Ghana Medical Association (GMA) yesterday launched its news magazine to enhance health education to the people.
The monthly magazine, ‘GMA Focus’, is also an advocacy mouthpiece on social and medical issues both within the medical profession and the wider health sector.
The Deputy Director-General of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), Dr George Amofa, launched the magazine and called on members of the GMA to ensure that contributors to the news magazine were guided by the core values of the GHS.
The values, which he said were a guide to health professionals, emphasise people centredness, professionalism, teamwork, discipline, innovation and excellence, and integrity.
Those values, according to him, were the fundamental values of life that society would have to inculcate.
Dr Amofa said a lot of things were going wrong in the country because people did not care about their health.
A past President of the GMA, Prof. Agyemang Badu Akosa, who chaired the function, called on health professionals to practise the profession holistically.
He said every human action affected the health of people and therefore health personnel needed to educate and sensitise people to healthy living, adding that not until people were ready to practise healthy living, the health of the country would not improve.
The Editor of the Daily Graphic, Mr Ransford Tetteh, who was a special guest at the launch, called on the GMA to use the news magazine to educate the general populace on the need to keep their surroundings healthy.
He deplored instances where people lived in unhealthy environments created by themselves, attracting contagious diseases and said the GMA could use the magazine to educate such people.
He said the news magazine had come at a time when a lot of education was required for people to embrace healthy lifestyles for economic growth.
He commended the GMA on the introduction of the magazine and called on the association to ensure that it was made available to all so that people could take their destiny into their own hands and assured the association of the GJA’s readiness to support it in achieving its aim.
The General Secretary of the GMA and Editor-in-Chief of the magazine, Dr Sodzi Sodzi-Tettey, said each edition of the news magazine would feature a dominant theme and regular columns that would include, ethics and practice, faith and health, finance and investments and a student page with the aim of fostering a better relationship between the GMA and medical students.
He said the magazine would also be based on three areas — public health education and advocacy, the need to appreciate great but unrecognised work in medical practice and the provision of a platform for holding creative conversations.