The Ghana Health Service, Food and Drugs Authority, and the Ghana Revenue Authority have been asked to enforce regulatory frameworks on health harming products to prevent their infiltration and commercialisation on the Ghanaian markets.

A Civil Society Status Report on National NCD Response and Landscape in Ghana said products like sugar-sweetened beverages, tobacco, and alcohol were still being smuggled into the country and were adding up to the already growing epidemic of non-communicable diseases (NCDs).

The report copied to the Ghana News Agency said there was also the rampant abuse and misuse of medicines and medical products among the population and that ‘These substandard and falsified medicines are in themselves dangerous, and lead to ineffective treatment, thus complicating and prolonging ill-health and disease,’ it stated

The report said to add up to the problems, there was a lack of monitoring systems to monitor minors’ exposure to health harming products.

‘Minors are involved in the commercial
isation of health harming products like alcohol, tobacco, especially shisha, among others and that there is little or no enforcement mechanism to monitor and prevent children and youths from being used in these effects.

The report noted that NCDs are largely developed because of inadequate implementation and enforcement of effective regulatory frameworks and that every effort must be made to reduce the diseases burden because if the future generation in the early stages of life were exposed to the same risk factors, then effortless action was being made.

Source: Ghana News Agency