The food industry is predictably upset about these measures and will fight them tooth-and-nail, much like the tobacco companies fought against the TPPA.But the question remains whether the measures will survive long enough to be brought in front of the WTO Dispute Settlement Panel. While there are frightening health statistics that seem to favor implementation of the measures and a high economic burden of obesity,the regulations as they stand likely will not make it to the WTO. The measures are extremely restrictive and will probably be altered before any WTO dispute. However, if a request for consultations is filed against Chile, Chile would certainly have a good argument that the measures were enacted to combat a legitimate health risk. The WTO dispute settlement panel would most likely side against plain packaging regulations if they applied to other products such as unhealthy foods or alcohol. For example, a restrictive packaging law on alcohol that is similar to Australia’s on tobacco is unlikely to hold up because of how restrictive Australia’s packaging regulations are and how dangerous tobacco use is. To institute regulations as trade-restrictive as Australia did in the TPPA, the objective will likely have to be as compelling or more compelling than reducing smoking. Alcohol and unhealthy foods are similar to tobacco in many ways. All three are addictive and can lead to diseases that cause premature death.However,grow tables 4×8 tobacco use has one characteristic neither alcohol nor unhealthy foods have; the ability to immediately harm those around you.
There are certainly arguments concerning the dangers of drinking too much and getting behind the wheel of a vehicle or the rising cost of healthcare in Chile due to poor diet. But second-hand smoke implicates another level of harm. As noted earlier, second-hand smoke kills an estimated 890,000 people per year, globally.The economic cost is great as well.All of this comes simply from being near someone who is making the decision to smoke. This is a big reason why there has been so much attention on the dangers of smoking. It is not only a huge health concern for those that choose to partake, but also those who do not. Another reason smoking is a larger public health concern than alcohol and unhealthy foods is the minimum amount of use it takes to cause harm to the body. As previously noted, smoking one cigarette can cause irreparable harm to your body.Having one drink or one unhealthy meal is unlikely to harm you in this way. Another case to consider is marijuana use, which has been a growing trend in recent years. Marijuana is an interesting topic for several reasons. First, it is not legal in most places around the world. However, the legality of marijuana is trending, and there could be a robust market in the future.200 Second, it is consumed in many different ways. It can be smoked like a cigarette, but does this mean it should be regulated like tobacco use? It can also be eaten, and in many instances, is made into flavored treats that mask the taste. Does that make it more like the unhealthy foods discussed earlier? In any way it is consumed, it gives the consumer a “high”, much like drinking alcohol to the point of intoxication. Does this mean it should be regulated like alcohol? The truth is that this is uncharted territory. Of all the vices discussed, cannabis may be the one that passes the test for a legitimate health regulation.
Because of its widespread illegality, there isn’t as much data on the death toll and financial cost of marijuana use. However, the CDC does have some information about its effects.This data suggests that marijuana could possibly cause mental disorders, cancer, and heart and lung health issues.This is, of course, assuming the marijuana is being smoked by the user. It can also be compared to tobacco use because of similar concerns around the dangers of second-hand smoke. Though there is not as much data, it seems safe to assume this could raise, at the very least, concerns over health issues. The question remains, is it as bad as cigarette smoke? Only time will tell, but because it’s use is not as widespread as tobacco, it is unlikely that cannabis will garner as much attention for plain packaging purposes. If the growing trend of marijuana legalization continues, we will surely have clarity on these issues sooner rather than later.Recently, neuropsychiatric disorders have been conservatively estimated to be 14% of the global burden of disease, more than the burden of cardiovascular disease or cancer, and their conditions account for a quarter of disability adjusted life-years. The World Health Organization also estimates that 25% of the world’s population will suffer from mental, behavioural, and neurological disorders such as schizophrenia, mental retardation, alcohol and drug abuse, dementias, stress related disorders, and epilepsy during their lifetime. Mostly affecting the poor and people from developing countries, depression impinges on more than 450 million people and might become the second most important cause of disability by 2020 . Despite these new insights, as the 20th century revealed Herculean advancements in somatic healthcare worldwide, the mental aspect of healthcare has remained stagnant and in some cases, gravely depreciated. Mentally ill people are some of the most vulnerable people in society. They are often subject to discrimination, social isolation and exclusion, human rights violations, and an ancient, demeaning stigma which leads to bereavement of social support, self-reproach, or the decaying or straining of important relationships.
Consequences of poor mental health also include being predisposed to a variety of physical illnesses, having quality of life be reduced, having fewer opportunities for income, and having lower individual productivity, which affects total national output. Poor mental health can also account for violence, drug trafficking, child abuse, paedophilia, suicide, crime, and other social vices. Even though mental health is becoming a serious international health concern, many countries, specifically the more impoverished countries, struggle to address the inadequate amount of resources being funnelled into the nonphysical sector of health. Low-income countries often have insufficient implementations of policies and limited mental health services confined to short staffed institutions. Furthermore, in both developed and undeveloped countries, the poor are more vulnerable to common mental disorders due to experiences of rapid social change, risks of violence, poor physical health, insecurity, and hopelessness. Women, slum dwellers,plants rack and people living in conflict, war prone, and disaster areas of civil unrest constitute a large portion of the population in developing countries, and are specifically susceptible to the burden of mental illness. For instance, 90% of the 12 million worldwide schizophrenia sufferers who do not receive adequate psychiatric services are located in developing countries. Only 50% of countries in Africa have a mental health policy, and if they do have a law, it is usually archaic and obsolete. Ninety percent of African countries have less than one psychiatrist per 100,000 people, and 70% of the countries allocate the mental health sector with less than 1% of the total health budget. Less than 60% of African countries have community mental health care while the rest are focused on psychiatric hospitals. The World Psychiatric Association suggested that the development of mental health programmes are impeded in Africa because of the scarcity of economic and staff resources, lack of awareness on the global burden of mental illness, and the stigma associated with seeking psychiatric care. Mental health has been shunned in Africa, and several reports disclose a higher prevalence of stigma in developing countries than in first world countries. Similar to many other developing countries, treatment of mental health in Ghana, West Africa is low and continues to rely on institutional care, a vestige from colonialism. In Ghana, it is roughly estimated that at least 2,816,000 people are suffering from moderate to severe mental disorders, and only 1.17% of these people receive treatment from public hospitals because only 3.4% of the total health budget is dedicated to psychiatric hospitals.
Because there is one psychiatrist per 1.5 million people in the whole country, and the three major psychiatric hospitals are under-financed, congested, and under-staffed, many resort to more ever-present and more affordable, traditional or faith healing. Ghana has a deep-seated tradition of religious observance. Thus, 70– 80% of Ghanaians utilize unorthodox medicine from the 45,000 traditional healers, located in both urban and rural areas, for their vanguard healthcare despite recent advances in orthodox psychiatric services. Although research shows that mental-health patients who used spiritual healing usually reported an improvement in their condition, the quality of treatment is not easy to ensure. Sometimes in order to exorcise supposed demons, individuals are chained, flogged, or incarcerated into spiritual, prayer camps. In spite of these atrocious facts, policy-makers seem to have little concern for mental health, and focus more on physical health and population mortality. The Lunatic Asylum Ordinance of 1888, enacted by the Governor of the Gold Coast, Sir Griffith Edwards, marked the first official patronage to Ghana’s mental health services. This ordinance encouraged officials to arrest vagrant “insane people and place them in a special prison in the capital city of Accra. After the prison quickly filled, a Lunatic Asylum was built in 1906. In accordance with international trends, the asylum was later transformed into the Accra Psychiatric Hospital in 1951 with help from the first sub-Saharan psychiatrist, Dr. E. F. B. Foster. With high walls and barbed wire, to this day the hospital still resembles a prison, which harks back to how the mentally ill were dealt with during colonial times. Luckily, innovations such as the removal of chains from patients, abstaining from patient punishment, and use of chlorpromazine and electroconvulsive therapy arose in the fifties. During that time, the Accra Psychiatric Hospital was the only psychiatric facility in West Africa. In 1962, the Ghana Medical School started training undergraduates in psychiatry and a Mental Health Unit was formed within the Ministry of Health in the 1980s. Though Ghana’s psychiatric care has come a long way since the 1800s, there are still a lot of changes that need to occur in order to attain a standard of quality that is appropriate to recent advances. Ghana’s Mental Health Decree, which emphasizes institutional care and involuntary admission, has not changed since 1972, and treats the mentally ill as if they have no rights. Fortunately, a new Mental Health Bill, which was drafted in 2006, finally made it into the lap of Parliament in October of 2010. This legislation will promote practice of mental health care at the community level and protect the rights of people with mental illnesses. It has gained the support of traditional healers, nurses, and doctors, and will serve as a model for developing progressive mental health legislation in line with international human rights standards. Several researchers have noted a need to increase accurate and comprehensivedata collection on mental health impact and prevalence in order to help improve perceptions on the legitimacy of psychiatric services, and ultimately influence policy. Due to a shortage in personnel, there is a deficit of mental health information, hard community based data, and scientific estimates for neuropsychiatry disorders in Ghana. Because the World Health Organization’s agenda for mental health research in the developing world suggested to evaluate mental health services, this paper focuses on two of the three psychiatric hospitals, and analyzes the hospitals’ available services, resources, recent annual number of out-patients and in-patients, and most common diagnoses which have not been published since 2003. In an attempt to provide an argument for improving the resources and commitment to mental health, this paper also reports on the status of mental health care via information from interviews with key people in the mental health delivery system and non-governmental agencies involved in mental health. Ghana is a middle-income, developing, constitutionally democratic republic located in sub-Saharan West Africa along the Gulf of Guinea in between Cˆote d’Ivoire and Togo. Once a British colony of the Gold Coast, in 1957, Ghana was the first sub-Saharan country to gain its independence and is relatively politically stable. The population estimate for July 2011 is 24,791,073. The life expectancy is 61 years and high risk infectious diseases present include malaria, typhoid fever, meningococcal meningitis, hepatitis A, and diarrhoea. There are three prominent religions; 68.8% of Ghanaians are Christian, 15.9% are Muslim, and 8.5 percent follow a traditional religion.