The Ghana Science Association held a seminar at the College of Science auditorium on 15th April, 2015. The theme of the seminar was “The Role of Science and Technology in Maintaining a Healthy Environment and Quality Healthcare”.
Dr. Stella Ama Ennin, Director of Crop Research Institute, (CRI) stated that the theme was appropriate for the conference because maintaining a healthy environment was a key issue of national concern. According to Dr. Ennin, environmental conditions were key catalysts for the growth and spread of bacteria, vector-borne and parasitic diseases. She observed that the theme had a direct link with the theme of World Health Day which was celebrated by the World Health Organization (WHO) on 7th April 2015. The main concern of WHO on that day was food safety and the programme was to educate developing countries on avoiding unsafe food.
Dr. Ennin observed that the country’s industry accounted for only 27.4% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) according to the 2012 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) World Fact book report. According to her, Ghana should harness her human resource which was gifted and skilled scientifically and technologically to improve production in various sectors of the economy.
Professor F.A. Yeboah, head of Molecular Medicine, SMS/KATH explained to the participants that science was life and life was science and that science and technology had helped to produce high yielding crops, disease resistant and nutritious food and animal products that had greatly improved agriculture and eventually improved life expectancy.
Prof. Yeboah observed that science and technology were the panacea for making healthy choices in construction, rehabilitation, urban design, and ventilation. He therefore advised that scientists should work relentlessly and conduct cutting-edge research to improve the environment and healthcare.
Dr. Mrs. Angelina. O. Amedo, lecturer, Optometry and Visual Science did a presentation on “Understanding Your Vision: You and Your Eye”. She explained how our lifestyle – the food we ate and our working environment – affected our vision. She advised that there should be a reasonable distance between an individual and the computer in a working environment and that one should take off the eye from the computer from time to time to protect eye-sight. She observed that we should eat food that contained Vitamin E and also go for regular eye checks.
In Dr. Amedo’s presentation, she touched on two eye cases; glaucoma and cataract. She explained that Ghana had the second highest number of glaucoma cases in the world and she recommended that individuals should go for regular eye tests to prevent such cases.
Mrs. Faustina O. Mensah of the Biochemistry Department titled her presentation “Listen to Your Body”. She stated that people should do regular medical checkups, exercise, watch the kind of foods they ate and have enough rest.
Three BSc students gave a presentation on “Food Fraud: Is this a Reality?” Their focus was on food powder – pepper, tomato, shrimp, fish and other powders – on the market. According to them, their investigation proved that some products other than real pepper, tomatoes, fish and shrimp were used in the preparation of the powders with some additives to attract consumers. They stated that they were still investigating whether the particular products used were edible or not.
In all, there were twenty-two presentations but the three noted above were adjudged to be the best.
On poster presentations, a Masters student, Jeffery Aryee, had a poster entitled “Development of High Resolution Rainfall Climatology for Ghana” which was considered the best of the five poster presentations at the seminar.
Mr. Aryee stated in his poster presentation that various sectors of the country's economy (health, energy, agriculture and the like) depend on climate, and as such availability of reliable data on climate was essential for climate impact studies in these sectors. According to Mr. Aryee, the rainfall database for Ghana had been developed using Gestation data spanning a 33-year period (1980 – 2012). Seasonal rainfall for the four agro ecological zones had been derived based on 0.25o x 0.25o grids covering the entire country.
He added that this showed a clear evidence of the Inter-Tropical Discontinuity (ITD) migration from the South of the country to the North and back. This study provided firsthand data for climate impact study in the aforementioned sectors across the country.