Manuel Koranteng Writes: How My Diabetes Diagnosis Inspired A National Advocacy For Employee Wellbeing

I was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes at just 24 years old, and it changed my life.

I have always been a workaholic – and I don’t say this with the pride you would think. I was the guy who was always willing to commit another hour, another shift, another day – it was always just one more task.

Right from my days as a radio morning show host at the University of Ghana, Legon, to becoming a multimedia journalist at Joy 99.7 FM and JoyNews, before leaving for the UK, everyone who has known me, knows how passionate I am about my work. To be able to do what you love, and get paid for it, summed up why I kept giving more and more of myself, even sometimes at the expense of my own wellbeing.

I must be honest, that lifestyle has paid off in ways I never imagined. It has opened doors, gotten me into rooms I could only dream of, and brought me accelerated breakthroughs even in my relatively short professional life.

Manuel Koranteng writes: How my diabetes diagnosis inspired a national advocacy for employee wellbeing

So I’m aware it’s the price you pay for greatness – or so I thought. Working incredibly long hours while surviving on 2-4hrs of sleep was normal. I missed meals because I didn’t have time to eat well, I’ll down energy drinks to power me through the busy days, and when the slow days came, it was really sedentary for me.

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I was never forced to do these, but more importantly, there were no guardrails to regulate this habit. So, typical of someone with unbridled passion for their job, this went on for a while until my body didn’t feel right anymore.

When I eventually went to the hospital, the doctors said I may not have made it to the next day alive. And with a blood sugar level of 33mol/l at the time, thank God I went there when I did!

To appropriate the words of the good book, what shall it profit a man, to work so hard for success and not live to see or enjoy the fruits of his labour?

This is my story – only I’m still alive to tell it. But it is also the story of so many workers across Ghana. We live at work, but go home to sleep. Across our workplaces, we know, we’re all dying slowly. Instead of working to live, we’re living to work.

And with the recent scary surge in non-communicable diseases among working professionals, it has become all the more important to turn our attention to workplaces and how they are impacting the health of our workforce.

That’s exactly why I started MentaPulse Africa – to lead advocacy for employee mental health and wellbeing in Ghana, and across the African continent – and we mean it.

After months of sensitisation, advocacy, outreach and community mobilisation from outside the country, I returned in October to convene the maiden edition of the #GhanaHealthandLabourSummit which brought together all the key stakeholders across Ghana’s employment mix to assess the hidden link between work and health.

With the full backing of the Ministry of Labour, Jobs and Employment as well as the sector Minister, Hon D. Rashid Pelpuo, we are developing Ghana’s first Workplace Health and Wellbeing Declaration, which will among other things, streamline government, employer and employee actions, towards creating healthier workplaces.

I’m grateful to my team at MentaPulse Africa for such an incredible job, as well as our partners, including the University of Ghana School of Public Health, Chartered Institute of Human Resource Management, Ghana, Ghana Employers Association, Mental Health Authority, and several other professional and worker unions, who contributed in diverse ways to making this possible.

To our sponsors, Merban Capital, CecilMorgan Heights, MAB International Hospital, Zoe Premium Dental and Twellium Industries, we say thank you – once again.

As we begin a new month today, I remember fondly what we did a few weeks ago. We lit a flame of transformation and began a movement for change – until workplaces in Ghana are reset to allow employees to truly thrive.

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