New Year School participants screened

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THE Institute of Adult Education on Monday organised a medical screening exercise for participants in this year’s New Year School currently taking place at the University of Ghana, Legon.
The exercise is the first since the New Year School began 60 years ago. The participants had their blood pressure, sugar level and body mass index examined, while they went through Voluntary Counselling and Testing (VCT with the women having their breasts examined.
The participants were also educated on their health status and counselled on the need to adopt healthy life styles.
A team of eight doctors and 14 nurses were in charge of the exercise. As of 9:50 a.m, about 320 of the participants had been screened for various diseases.
The Director of the 60th annual New Year School, Dr Daniel Oduro-Mensah, told the Daily Graphic that the health exercise would become an annual feature of the New Year School event.
He said the objective of the exercise was to sensitise participants to the increasing health problems and advised them to desist from poor eating habits, among other things.
Dr Oduro-Mensah noted that the exercise was to save the participants from imminent danger, saying that unexpected diabetes, high blood pressure and stroke were worrying.
At the end of the programme, Dr Oduro-Mensah said at the end of the school, the participants would issue a communiqué to make recommendations on issues that would feed into the country’s policy.
This year’s New Year School is on the theme: “ Life-long Learning for Accelerated National Development”.
The annual New Year School provides the platform for discussing issues that affect the country and offer suggestions on how to address them.