Launch Of Health & Pollution Action Plan (HPAP)

Professor Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng, Minister of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation (MESTI) has launched the Ghana Health and Pollution Action Plan (HPAP), which was facilitated by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO-Ghana), with funding from the European Union (EU) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). “The Government had taken a number of steps towards addressing the impact of pollution on human health”, said Professor Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng. “The HPAP will give impetus to our commitment and provide a sense of direction”.

The HPAP – together with its three project proposals focussing on Municipal Solid Waste Management, Resource Efficiency and Cleaner Production and Mapping of Contaminated sites – was validated by a national workshop in December 2018. “The HPAP results from a series of stakeholder engagements, which included the identification and prioritization of Ghana’s pollution issues as well as the preparation of project proposals to address these critical issues”, said UNIDO Representative for Ghana and Liberia Fakhruddin Azizi. “We needed a comprehensive approach to devise a strategic and systematic approach, which now requires all stakeholders to work together”.

“This is the first time that we designed interventions related to the nexus between environmental pollution and human health”, said Nilguen Tas, Deputy Director of UNIDO’s Environment Department.“This is the start of the process, a rallying point for stakeholders to address the health impacts of environmental pollution”.

Led by MESTI, the HPAP was prepared by a technical working group comprising of representatives from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Ghana Health Services (GHS), the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), the World Health Organization (WHO-Ghana), the Soil and Water Research Institutes of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), and the non-governmental organization Pure Earth.