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Aims: The aim of this study is to describe the age-related risk of overweight/obesity among Ghanaians using data from the WHO Study on global AGEing and adult health (SAGE) Wave 2.Study Design:Cross sectional study.Place and Duration of Study:Ghana; 2014-2015. Methodology:Primary study variables were extracted onto Microsoft Excel 14.0 spreadsheet. Secondary variables were generated through grouping, recategorization and combination of primary variables. Descriptive statistics were calculated for age and BMI. Associations between respondents’ characteristics and BMI were evaluated with chi square(χ2) and odds ratio (OR) at 95% confidence level.Results:Data of 1322 respondents were included in data analysis. In all, 520 (39.3%) of the respondents were overweight/obese and nearly half (46.62%) were middle-aged adults. Middle-aged adults were nearly twice as likely to be overweight/obese compared with old adults (AOR=1.62; CI: 1.25-2.10) and the risk was higher for middle-aged females (AOR=2.38; CI: 1.84-3.09). Overall, beingmiddle-aged (OR=1.73; CI: 1.35-2.21); living in an urban community (OR=2.01; CI: 1.61-2.52); being a female (OR=2.69; CI: 2.1-3.44); not engaging in regular physical activity (OR=1.49; CI: 1.18-1.88); and being an occasional drinker of alcoholic beverage (OR=1.58; CI: 1,12-2.22) were significantly associated with overweight/obesity.Conclusion:Obesity/overweight are lifestyle driven phenomenon and can be controlled by risk modification. Public sensitization, imposition of special taxes on sugary beverages, promotion of healthy local staples and creation of enabling community environments to encourage physical activity may be useful approaches in controlling the epidemic
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Background: Tuberculosis remains a major global health problem. It is one of the top 10 causes of death worldwide. In Africa, there were estimated 2.7 million new cases of tuberculosis and 450 thousand deaths in 2014. In Ghana, incidence rate of TB was estimated to be 152 per 100,000 populations in 2017 according to the WHO estimates. We evaluated a health district (Ejisu-Juaben) Tuberculosis surveillance system to describe its operations, attributes, determine its usefulness and whether its objectives were being met.Methods: This descriptive study was conducted using the Center for Disease Control and Prevention updated guidelines for evaluating public health surveillance systems and the Ghana Health Service Standard Operating Procedures for priority diseases and conditions (2012). Study participants who were purposively sampled were interviewed with a semi-structured questionnaires and dataset from January 2016 to December 2018 were reviewed at various levels of the surveillance system. Data was collected and analyzed with Epi Info 7.2 between 1st February, 2019 and 30th April, 2019.Results: The surveillance system was useful and partially met its objectives and targets. It was well structured, simple, stable, flexible and of good data quality. It was also averagely acceptable and representative. However, it recorded poor sensitivity of 15.12% and poor predictive value positive (PVP) of 12.27% in 2018. The yearly total cost of operation of the TB surveillance system was ¢79,950.76 ($16,316.44 USD).Conclusions:The surveillance system was useful and met its objectives partially. The sensitivity, PVP, acceptability and representativeness need improvement in order to justify its relevance.