The Member of Parliament (MP) for Klottey Korle Constituency in the Greater Accra Region, Dr Zanetor Agyeman-Rawlings, has called for increased education and awareness on the increasing rate of autoimmune diseases and conditions, including arthritis.
She said, like all medical conditions, there was a need to raise awareness on the condition, as well as the urgency in training more specialists in that area to bridge the wide gap in the doctor-patient ratio.
Dr Agyeman-Rawlings made the call at an event to commemorate World Arthritis Day, held last Sunday in Accra.
The Klottey Korle MP, who insisted on the floor of the House for rheumatic conditions to be included in the Mahama Care project, stated that the current situation called for “awareness, compassion and vision” in addressing it.
She further called for a guide to students to help them develop their career path early in life as an intentional way of encouraging more of them to be trained as rheumatologists, explaining that such an intervention was key in helping improve the current situation of only three specialists serving the country.
World Arthritis Day
World Arthritis Day is marked on October 12 each year as a global awareness event,
Established in 1996 by Arthritis and Rheumatism International (ARI), it aims to highlight the impact of rheumatic and musculoskeletal diseases (RMDs) worldwide.
This year’s event was on the theme: “It’s in your hands, take action”.
In Ghana, the event was organised by a non-governmental organisation (NGO) of health workers helping to create awareness in that area, The Rheumatology Initiative (Rti).
The day also coincided with the launch of the “Rheuma Connect App” to bridge the gap between doctors and patients and also serve as a platform for research and career development.
Launching the App, Dr Agyeman-Rawlings explained that it would serve as an arena for patients to easily connect with their doctors, ask for medical advice and get treatment, as well as their prescriptions.
She called for harnessing technology to bridge the gap between patients and doctors and help track symptoms.
Digital medicine
The Director and Founder of the 10-year-old RTI, Prof. Dzifa Dey, called for the promotion of digital medicine as the doctor-patient ratio keeps widening.
She said the patient-centred App was to track and receive knowledge for early treatment.
“Beyond the awareness creation, the app is to help dispel misconceptions about the disease and help patients,” Prof. Dey said.
Diagnosis
The Provost, College of Health Sciences, University of Ghana, Legon, Prof. Alfred F. Yawson, explained that arthritis, rheumatoid and other related conditions were part of Non-Communicable Diseases (NCD), also known as silent killers, but often given less importance.
He said the economic loss as a result of such illness, including joint pains, was huge, especially in women between the ages of 30 and 50 years, because they were mostly affected.
“Unfortunately, there are not many specialists or rheumatologists as there are only three such specialists in the country,” he stated.
Solution
To solve the shortage of such doctors, the Provost said some postgraduate doctors, also known as resident doctors, were being trained to fill the gap.
“Hopefully, in the next three years, we could have seven more to join the three. Even that is still inadequate.
“We need to make it a national project to train more to save people from such chronic back, joints and other pains,” he said.
