My Ghana Electronic Desk

BY EDMUND SMITH-ASANTE A patient having her blood pressure checked More than 300 people from all walks of life took advantage of a medical outreach organised on AU day, Friday, May 25, 2012, to receive free screening, diagnoses, counselling and treatment for various ailments and medical conditions. The seven-hour medical outreach, which was organised by the Christ Chapel branch of the Full Gospel Church International (FGCI) at Race Course near Taborah in Accra, with support from pharmaceutical companies, Kinapharma, Ayrton Drugs and other health establishments, began at 7:30am and ended at 2:30pm. According to pastor of the church, Dr. Frederick Arhin, also a specialist dental surgeon at the Korle-Bu Hospital, Christ Chapel decided to take advantage of AU Day, a day when all Africans were talking about peace on the African continent, as part of the church’s corporate responsibility to society. “This forms part of the responsibility of the church in giving back to th

BY EDMUND SMITH-ASANTE Chinua Achebe An academic group based in San Antonio, Texas, USA, calling itself SuperScholar, has listed prolific Nigerian writer, Chinua Achebe’s, best seller, ‘Things Fall Apart’, now a movie with veteran Nigerian actor Pete Edoche starring as the lead character Obi Okonkwo, as one of ‘50 Most Influential Books of the last 50 years’. The group’s editors named Achebe’s first novel, incidentally the only one in the full list authored by a full bred African, published in 1958 and translated to more than 60 languages, as one of the 50 most influential books, among books by other world acclaimed writers. Books written by other acclaimed writers, some of which have been embroiled in controversy since their publication, were listed as Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code published in 2003, which has been enormously influential in getting people to think that Jesus Christ is not who Christians say he is, Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses published in 1988,

BY EDMUND SMITH-ASANTE CNN 2011 finalists Just one Ghanaian journalist – Joshua Anny of Joy FM, Ghana, made it to the finals of the prestigious CNN MultiChoice African Journalist 2012 awards, when finalists were announced Friday. In all, 34 finalists were announced by Ferial Haffajee, Chair of the independent judging panel in the CNN MultiChoice African Journalist 2012 Competition, which this year enters its 17th milestone. According to a release issued on Friday, this year the competition received entries from 42 countries across the continent, including French and Portuguese speaking Africa, out of which journalists from 12 countries made the mark. The finalists were named as Tunde Akingbade, Freelance, The Guardian on Sunday,   Ahaoma Kanu, National Daily Newspaper,   and Peter Nkanga, Elor Nkereuwem, Musikilu Mojeed & Idris Akinbajo, NEXT on Sunday, all from Nigeria, Joshua Anny, Joy FM, Ghana and Manar Attiya, Ahram Hebdo, Egypt. Others are Adriaan Basson &

BY EDMUND SMITH-ASANTE A slum in Ghana The world’s illegal settlements, otherwise referred to as slums, have come to stay, and may no longer be razed down as was done frequently in past years, suggests a journal published by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED). According to the new issue of peer reviewed journal Environment and Urbanization published Wednesday, May 2, 2012, this is because organisations of the ‘illegal’ urban poor have made themselves matter to city governments by mapping and documenting their informal settlements and the people and businesses in them.    The journal makes its deductions from papers published by some African, Asian and Latin American countries that host the world’s estimated billion slum dwellers. These are Ghana, India, Mexico, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Thailand, Uganda, and Zimbabwe, which show in their papers that the urban poor are often better able than government departments to produce relevant

BY EDMUND SMITH-ASANTE Rice prepared the Indian way Officials at the launch of a new international project at the World Nutrition Rio de Janeiro Congress 2012 held on April 28, known as the Biodiversity for Food and Nutrition Project, have asked for renewed emphasis to be placed on sustaining the natural variety of crops and animals contributing to agriculture, including neglected but nutritious traditional foods. They opined that a renewed stress on traditional foods can go a long way to improve food security and address growing global concerns over poor nutrition and its negative health effects. Currently, one third of the world's population suffers from hunger and micronutrient malnutrition, while obesity and diet-related chronic illnesses have reached critical levels. The Biodiversity for Food and Nutrition Project, therefore aims to address the narrowing variety of people’s diets, with nutritionally-poor processed foods dominating the dinner table, which trend it