Dr. Mrs. Alberta Biritwum Nyarko, Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA) Health Director, said they “are 10 times likely to have the disease than males in the same age group, elsewhere in the country”.  She made the findings of the survey known at the annual health performance review meeting held in Kumasi. She could, however, not tell what was making more men in the region increasingly hypertensive, except to say that further research was being carried out to determine the cause. The meeting brought together health professionals from the various facilities and medical institutions, chiefs and representatives from civil society organizations.

Dr. Mrs. Biritwum-Nyarko identified hypertension as the third highest cause of death in the metropolis.They were therefore determined to launch sustained public education and health outreach programmes to reverse the trend, she added.  She spoke of the success they were making to bring down maternal deaths, saying that, it had reduced to 290 per 100,000 livebirths, from 336 per 100,000 livebirths.

Infant mortality, she indicated, had also dropped from 3.6 per 1,000 livebirths to 1.9 per 1,000 livebirths.  The Metropolitan Health Director applauded the Kumasi South Hospital’s Infectious Disease Treatment Unit, for leading efforts to curb respiratory diseases, through the study of airborne viruses.

Mr. Solomon Boakye, an official at the metropolitan health directorate, said five out of the seven suspected meningitis cases reported from the five sub-metropolitan areas proved positive and that there were three deaths.He underlined the need to build more community-based health planning and services (CHPS) compounds to improve access to quality health care.

He repeated the call to the National Health Insurance Authority(NHIA) to promptly reimburse the facilities for services rendered to insurance card holders.