AstraZeneca has introduced its Healthy Heart Africa (HHA) initiative aimed to prevent and control hypertension and Non-Communicable Diseases (NCD). The initiative seeks to strengthen local healthcare centres, build resilience and prevention to reduce the higher rate of Chronic Kidney Diseases (CKD). Mr Deepak Arora, Country President, African Cluster, AstraZeneca, speaking in Accra said the initiative was targeted at integrating screening, diagnosing of NCDs at the primary level and secondary level for a resilient health system. He said a many Ghanaians were silently suffering from hypertension, cardiovascular diseases and NCDs, therefore, strengthening local healthcare centres and building their resilience on prevention and control would contribute to the reduction of CKD patients reaching the dialysis stage. He said HHA has over the years screened 9.1 million patients, and this year's chapter was adding CKD as part of the NCD prevention and easy access to treatment. Mr Arora said the initiative was to educate and strengthen patients to improve upon their lives to achieve a resilient health system. He said HHA would have 25 centres across Ghana both public and private to look into, especially the local healthcare centres to prevent patients from progressing to the complicated stage of CKDs. 'The centres will have healthcare providers trained to educate and advocate patients to seek early treatments,'he added. He said early screening, diagnosis and treatment of hypertension, diabetes and CKDs were important, calling on the Ministry of Health and professional societies of Ghana to collaborate fight against these diseases. Dr Anthony Nsiah-Asare, Presidential Advisor on Health, told the Ghana News Agency that the HHA initiative was important and timely because CKD awareness in Ghana was very low, therefore, educating and investing in kidney health promotion would help prevent kidney diseases. He said it was important to educate citizens to go for check-ups to know their CKD stage for immediate recovery ac tions. He said when there was early detection it reduced the number of patients suffering from CKD and released the burden on the country as well. He urged other stakeholders, private partners and Non-governmental organisations to also partake in such initiatives to help eradicate NCDs and CKDs across the world. He expressed the hope that the HHA 2.0 initiative would contribute to the prevention and early detection to ensure improved patient outcomes and quality of life for persons living with CKD in Ghana. He commended AstraZeneca for partnering Ghana Health Service and professional societies in the development of a protocol to manage and prevent CKDs. Source: Ghana News Agency
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