The Right Health Investments

Nutrition in the pre-natal stage and early childhood is fundamental to guarantee overall health and well-being.

It brings multiple benefits to the economy through a lowered rate of disease and a boost in productivity throughout life.

Yet, Ghana faces many challenges and nutrition is just one of them.

There are many potentially incredible solutions to challenges from malaria to education, from better transportation to more productive agriculture.

Between 2000 and 2015 the world made great progress on the Millennium Development Goals, which aimed to hit important targets in education, income growth, fighting disease and so on. In 2015, world leaders followed up that success by establishing the Sustainable Development Goals, a hodge-podge of 169 priorities. We’re now halfway to the target date of 2030 and, not surprisingly, progress has been minimal. In part, COVID setbacks are to blame but the crucial problem is lack of focus.

Across the world, countries have imposed social distancing regulations to avoid overwhelming the health care capacity during the coronavirus pandemic — the so-called “flatten the curve”. Such a policy can make a lot of sense.

The first peer-reviewed cost-benefit analysis of the US shows just that. It looks at moderate social distancing, an approach similar to Sweden’s. Here, social interaction is reduced about 40 per cent, allowing schools and work to stay open but dramatically reducing contacts in all other public areas.