Walking to keep fit, promote local goods
A group of people poured onto some streets of Accra last Saturday to kill two birds with one stone, so to speak.
The El-Wak Keep Fit Club and similar clubs organised a health walk to keep healthy and promote made-in-Ghana products.
Dubbed, “The Republic Day Health Walk”, the event attracted ministers of state, Members of Parliament (MPs) and other dignitaries.
There were also participants from Benin and Togo.
Walking or exercising to keep healthy has caught on with many people in recent times, especially when we are told to adopt preventive health methods, instead of waiting to be affected by diseases before we seek health care.
For most lifestyle diseases, the consequences of not preventing them can be costly and even fatal. And that is why medical practitioners and all health workers are placing the focus on initiatives such as regular work-outs to stay healthy.
We think it does not cost much to stay healthy by exercising regularly and staying on diets that provide nourishment for the body to fight diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, cancer and other such ailments that affect the organs.
The Daily Graphic sees a connection between health walks and good diet, especially when we change our reliance on foreign junk foods and eat what we grow here.
The food crops we produce are very healthy. In our traditional set-ups, people patronise foods that are fresh from the farms and gardens and not frozen items left in the refrigerators for many weeks or months.
Our health bill is high, sometimes beyond the capability of the government, and, therefore, healthy lifestyles being promoted on a large scale will go a long way to reduce the expenditure on healthcare delivery.
The Daily Graphic is happy that the government is working hard to use health walks to create the consciousness in Ghanaians to patronise made-in-Ghana goods.
Our economy is bleeding because of people’s over-reliance on imported goods when the capacity exists for local production and consumption.
It has been said time and again that the country is going through challenges largely because of the paradigm shift we are pursuing that places emphasis on unbridled liberalisation, as against a certain level of protection for local producers.
No country practises absolute capitalism now, as there exists a policy initiative to cater for the needs of the poor, the excluded and the vulnerable.
The campaign to promote made-in-Ghana goods will succeed if an even playing field is created for Ghanaian producers to compete with imported items. Unless that conducive environment exists, imported items will squeeze out the space for local producers to compete and make a headway.
The donors will bark at us but we should be able to tell them to mind their own business because they have schemes that protect local producers in their countries.
