The Best Actions to Empower Girls and Reduce Poverty

In Ghana, health care policy interventions and research budgets have traditionally been directed towards combatting communicable diseases like HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis. These are still a major public health concern, but as the country advances toward greater prosperity, the prevalence of non-communicable diseases is also rapidly increasing.

Cardiovascular diseases, cancers, and diabetes are particularly on the rise in Ghana, and one of the largest risk factors for complications such as stroke and coronary heart disease is high blood pressure.

A new scorecard that purports to grade countries on development progress tells us little about how we are faring against humanity’s biggest challenges. Instead, it highlights the shortcomings of today’s unfocused global development agenda.

The potential impact of the coronavirus pandemic is enormous. But draconian policies to tackle the virus also have colossal costs. Ignoring the trade-offs could land us with one of the worst possible outcomes.

A landmark study by London’s Imperial College on death impacts from different policies helped change the minds of US President Donald Trump and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson towards implementation of lockdown policies. It showed that without any such policies, COVID-19 would kill a half-million people in Britain and 2.2 million people in the US.