Ghana’s Deputy Minister of Education has entreated citizens to embrace Yoga as a preventive health care mechanism to reduce the number of health cases recorded in hospitals.

Hon. Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa was the guest of honour at a curtain- raiser event organized by the Indian High Commission in collaboration with the Delhi Public School International (DPSI) located at Tema Community 25.

Students of DPSI showcased an entertaining session of Yoga under the guidance of Hitul Thakkar, a Yoga Instructor from the Art of Living Foundation.

The United Nations General Assembly declared June 21 as the International Day of Yoga in 2014. As the world gears up to celebrate the first edition on the theme ‘Yoga for Harmony and Peace’, Hon. Ablakwa has emphasized the need to incorporate Yoga in the lives of Ghanaians.

He says government has rolled out policies to focus on preventive rather than curative health care to reduce high cost of expenses in delivering quality health care in the country.

Emphasizing on regular exercise, Hon. Ablakwa opined that Ghanaians should adopt the over 6000-year-old practice which embodies breath control, meditation and specific bodily postures to ensure a healthy body, mind and soul.

“As a government, we believe that the International Yoga Day will help us realize our objective of achieving preventive health care where we do not spend our resources in importing expensive medication and carry out expensive surgery to fix the health care of our people but rather we should encourage more citizens to take up Yoga”

The Member of Parliament for North Tongu believes citizens must be conscious about measures that can help them to keep the mind, body and soul properly integrated. He also proposed the use of Yoga to propagate unity and peace in society.