School of Exercise Medicine marks anniversary

…with fitness fiesta at national sports stadium

By George Sydney Abugri

The National Sports For All Association of Ghana {NASFAAG} of the National Sports Authority in collaboration with the Medical Directorate of the Narh-Bita Hospital, the Ministry of Health and the recently established School of Exercise Medicine, Sports and Wellness in Tema, will round off the school’s fairly successful one year of existence with the last in a series of fitness training workshops scheduled for November 9-10 at the National Sports Stadium in Accra.

The workshops will be open to members of the public interested in fitness training but especially to medical doctors who work with sports clubs, fitness instructors who work for gymnasiums and keep fit clubs, physical education teachers in school and colleges, physiotherapists, masseurs and sports coaches.

The School of Exercise Medicine, Sports and Wellness which is one of the departments of the Narh Bita College of Nursing, is the first educational institution of its kind in Africa. It was set up by the college to train health professionals who will administer appropriate dosages of physical exercise for the treatment, prevention and management of diseases in Ghana.

The establishment of the school has come in the wake of growing global recognition of the concept of physical exercise as a form of medical therapy for both the management and treatment of diseases.

Global recognition of the importance of physical exercise in the treatment and management of diseases led to the first ever world congress on exercise medicine which was held in the United States in June 2010 under the auspices of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) with a small delegation from Ghana in attendance.

The United States, the United Kingdom, South Africa, Singapore and Japan are among a growing list of countries around the world whose governments have developed appropriate guidelines for the promotion of physical activities and dietary practices among their national populations.

The head of the School of Exercise Medicine, Professor Reginald Ocansey hopes Ghana will develop similar guidelines to be incorporated in national health policy.

He says the application of exercise medicine in the promotion of a healthy national population has the potential to significantly lower the nation’s high prevalence of non-communicable diseases.

Ghana has made considerable progress in the fight against communicable diseases but the prevalence rates of non-communicable diseases among the population remain alarmingly high.

Deaths from cardiovascular diseases as a result of physical inactivity and sedentary lifestyles account for about 60 per cent of adult deaths in Ghana.

If there is any bad news with respect to these statistics, it is a recent report from the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital’s Department of Medicine that stroke which was associated with the middle-aged and elderly has become common in the age group 25-40 years.

For 10 years running, stroke has also remained the leading cause of death at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital in Kumasi where a recent study revealed that 73 percent of hypertensive patients did not engage health promoting physical activity.

In sharp contrast, people who engage in regular physical exercise made the following comments during random interviews in Tema: “I feel good after exercising. When I am unable to exercise, I feel terrible. I am not very energetic. I cannot concentrate and I tire easily.” “Now that I exercise almost daily, I am no longer as stiff and sore all over the body most of the time as I used to be. I used to feel depressed and anxious often. All that is now gone”. Other comments included “I do not get sick as often as I used to”, “The pain in my back, neck, and shoulders have gone away”, “My attitude toward everything around me is more positive. “ “I feel more confident. “ The doctor says my blood pressure has dropped so dramatically.”

Medically safe and beneficial exercise however requires the supervision of professionally trained and certificated fitness instructors.

Fitness instructors who have had no professional training could put those they lead in physical exercises at risk of injury and serious health-threatening conditions. “If you want to engage in group or customized physical exercises, it makes common sense to entrust your money, your health and indeed your life to only instructors who have been professionally trained and certificated as such” says Professor Ocansey.

The Director of the Narh-Bita Hospital in Tema, Dr. Edward Narh has confirmed that significant numbers of people are dying or collapsing during physical exercise and sports because they did not go through the necessary strength and cardiovascular screening and assessment that should precede physical exercise. Some may have exercised under unqualified supervision.

In the past year, hundreds of participants at the workshops of the Narh-Bita School of Exercise Medicine who successfully completed the series of workshops have progressively been issued with the Clinical Exercise Practitioners Levels One, Two certificates and three certificates.

In the course of the year, the school organized an Aerobic Fitness Day for the general public at New Ningo near Prampram under the auspices of the Ghana Physical Education and Sport Think Tank and the Narh-Bita School of Exercise Medicine, Sports and Wellness to mark World Exercise is Medicine Month.

Participants were taught fitness programming, nutrition and wellness, kinetics, the science and prescription of physical exercise, first aid, care and prevention of injuries and endorphin massage.

The school also held a seminar for doctors to equip them with the necessary tools, strategies and techniques they need for prescribing physical exercise for the treatment and management of diseases based on their patients’ individual health needs and taking into account, such factors as age, gender and state of health.

The school intends to continue with similar seminars because of the realization that doctors after diagnosing their patients’ health conditions, rarely ask them questions about their lifestyles and especially, the regularity of their engagement in beneficial physical exercise.

The school’s wide-ranging, long-term, certificated programmes cover studies and training courses in sports coaching, fitness training, regenerative health and nutrition, sports injuries management and rehabilitation, active lifestyles and wellness, sports psychology, sports administration and sports refereeing.

According to a statement issued by the school members of the public wishing to participate in the last fitness workshop in November need to contact the school by email at gpestt@gmail.com.

Dr. Narh wants the Government to recognize the critical role the school can play in helping to lower the national health budget through fitness and healthy lifestyle activities and support the institution in its bid to help promote a more healthy national population.

The physician says since a healthy working population would increase productivity at workplaces and contribute more meaningfully to national economic growth, corporate bodies need to avail themselves of the school’s services in providing regular physical fitness programmes for their workers. “We need the support of the government and corporate institutions to make this novel approach to health care in Ghana successful”, he said in an interview in Tema. Website: www.sydneyabugri.com/web Email: editing@sydneyabugri.com