The pressure of urban living in recent times coupled with urban health issues has become a challenge for many.

Many people have to endure harsh conditions, especially in terms of health issues in the urban areas just in the name of looking for greener pastures in these cities.

At a two-day conference organized by the Community Led Responsive and Effective Urban Health Systems (CHORUS) at the School of Public Health, University of Ghana, veteran journalist Dr Charity Binkah said that it is worrying that many people especially the youths have left towns and communities, which are rather serene and healthier, to the urban areas where health issues are on the rise daily.

Dr Binkah, who is also the founder and Executive Director of  Women, Media and Change (WOMEC), noted that some of these people end up becoming destitute due to the level of poverty and struggle they have to endure coupled with urban health issues.

She said that journalists are expected to be exposed to public issues that affect the health and well-being of the urban population, especially the vulnerable groups in urban areas.

Dr Binkah stated that with the training of selected journalists, they would be able to play an advocacy role in educating the citizenry and hold playmakers accountable for the health outcomes of the citizens

It would also help to build the capacity of journalists to report on gaps in the urban health systems and related issues identified.

She noted that most of these people, who have better facilities in the rural areas throw caution to the wind, leaving all the good things in their communities just to have better jobs in the cities which most are associated with all kinds of violence.

Dr Binkah noted that there is a need for journalists and media personnel to start a serious conversation on urban health so that the issues can be minimized.

 Selase Odopey, the programs manager for CHORUS Ghana, noted that CHORUS Ghana is focused on urban health and everything that encompasses it.

Selase Odopey also noted that there is a need for the media and researchers to collaborate to promote issues around health, especially in urban areas with the aim of reducing the menace.

The CHORUS Research Programme Consortium (RPC) aims to conduct research to understand, explore and evaluate interventions to build resilience and respond to the health challenges of increasingly rapid and uncontrolled urbanization across Low and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs).

Urban health systems in LMICs have to respond to the double burden of communicable (CDs) and non-communicable diseases (NCDs), the dominance of the non-government sector and the need to act across sectors on the wider determinants of health.

They also often have to grapple with wide social and economic inequities and questions around how to effectively deal with exclusion, four marginalization and related health and well-being challenges of those facing exclusion for various reasons such as ethnicity /caste, religion, disability and gender.

To build resilience and respond to these challenges and their impacts on health and wellbeing, the urban health system must be conceptualized to include sectors beyond health that impact health and enable linkages between multiple governments, NGOs and private providers whilst ensuring responsiveness and accountability to urban residents, particularly the poor.