The Anidaso Parkinson's Disease Foundation (APDF), in collaboration with Parkinson's Africa (PA), will organize a Parkinson's Disease (PD) awareness campaign in Accra.
Colonel Guy Deacon, a former British colonel, CBE, has been diagnosed with the cancer for the past 11 years, and the campaign will run from June 1 to June 3, 2022.
APDF and PA are two organizations with the same mission: to improve the lives of Ghanaians who are afflicted by sickness.
PD is the world's second-most-common neurological condition, and it's also the fastest-growing, with instances in Africa predicted to skyrocket in the coming years.
It is a devastating neurodegenerative ailment that affects the region of the brain that governs movement, and while no formal prevalence studies have been conducted, we do know that it accounts for 12% of disorders reported at our four major hospitals in Ghana's Neurology Clinics.
Mood, memory, cognition, and sleep are just a few of the processes that are affected.
The affected person's capacity to walk and operate independently deteriorates as the condition develops, leaving them largely or completely reliant on family, relatives, and carers.
Neurological illnesses, such as Parkinson's disease, are now the major cause of disability worldwide.
This implies that if the number of people diagnosed with Parkinson's disease rises in Ghana and Africa, so will the burden it places on society as a whole. Both the Anidaso Parkinsons Disease Foundation and Parkinsons Africa are dedicated to reducing this burden by providing Ghanaians with the tools and resources they need to make informed health decisions about the best management and treatment options for their Parkinson's disease in order to live as well as possible.
We feel that boosting PD awareness in Ghana is the first step toward achieving this goal.
The two groups have partnered up with Guy Deacon, a former British army officer who has PD, to use different media venues to inform and educate the public about the condition.
Guy began a "Freetown to Cape Town" adventure on April 11, 2022, in Freetown, Sierra Leone, that would take him via Liberia, Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Cameroon, Congo, Angola, Namibia, and, finally, Cape Town, South Africa.
In each of these nations, he will meet with Parkinson's patients, neurologists, and health officials.
He'll also pay a visit to several of the continent's growing Parkinson's projects.
He is eager to meet the key players who determine policies that affect these patients, as well as to assist Parkinson's disease organizations and groups in determining how they may engage policymakers in the patients' best interests.
Following his travels, Guy Deacon will create a documentary to depict the tough realities of living with Parkinson's disease in both the UK and Africa, as well as to showcase the efforts of organizations like APDF and PA.
He is now in Liberia, and we anticipate his arrival in Ghana in the final week of May 2022.
We are working hard to find solutions that can alleviate some of the burdens that PD has placed on Ghanaian families and communities, but we can't do it alone. We need all of the help we can get.