Dr. Yaa Akyaa Boateng, the Family Physician Specialist at the International Maritime Hospital (IMaH), has said that preventive health checkups for women have some benefits for everyone and must be encouraged.
She said due to the backbone role women played in the family, society, and country, encouraging them to get checked up to prevent and detect sicknesses early in them would preserve their health to perform their dutie.
Dr. Boateng gave the advice during the weekly ‘Your Health! Our Collective Responsibility! A Ghana News Agency initiative aimed at promoting health-related communication and providing a platform for health information dissemination to influence personal health choices through improved health literacy
She noted that during preventive health checks, three areas-the history of the woman, physical examinations, and medical examinations-are done to pick up signs of sickness early for interventions and management.
Dr. Boateng stated that only regular maintenance helped preserve vehicles; pre
ventive checks also preserved good health in women to prevent complications and premature death.
She encouraged women to see a qualified health care person for checks, indicating that during such checks, their history, including risk factors for diseases such as cancer, diabetes, hypertension, hepatitis, sexually transmitted infections, and diseases, as well as pre-existing medical conditions,
She urged women to open and answer such questions, as it would help the doctors to make informed decisions about them and know their financial and social support systems, which would also help tailor a preventive plan that would suit them.
The IMaH Family Physician Specialist said during physical examinations, they checked from the head of the woman to the entire body to pick up any concerns.
She stated that the eyes are checked for any visual issues such as glaucoma, cataracts, and refractive errors, adding that sometimes some health conditions such as blood pressure, diabetes, and cholesterol caused complications
on the retina, which could be detected during eye examinations.
She said with the ears, having difficulty hearing could affect the quality of life of a woman and must also be examined for early detection and prevention.
The mouth, she said, would also be checked for gum diseases, which, if not detected early, increased the risk of cardiovascular disease as the bacteria that caused them could go into the bloodstream and to the heart.
She said the neck, which contained the thyroid, was checked for enlargement and whether it was over-functioning or under-functioning, indicating that its function in the body was for metabolism to break down the food eaten.
Dr Boateng explained that overworking the thyroid could lead to palpitations and hypertension, while underworking it would slow down metabolism, leading to weight gain.
Source: Ghana News Agency