October 2018

By Isaac Ato MENSAH Accra- 31 October, 2018. Last weekend, the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) celebrated its 23rd annual awards day at the Kempinski Hotel Gold Coast City Accra. It was a big moment for the winners. They have already used the occasion to brand their media houses. Obviously it gives them an important marketing edge over their counterparts. The winners’ marketing communications teams are already taking full advantage of it. We congratulate all winners and all journalists and all writers who are struggling to improve the Ghanaian media landscape. Ayekoo!!!… Well done. Now to some pictures from the weekend’s moments interspersed with some relevantRead More →

By Isaac Ato MENSAH Accra- 29 October, 2018.   From 25-26 October, Astana 2018, the World Health Organisation (WHO) conference on primary health care (PHC) was held successfully in Kazakhstan. Forty years ago in 1978, the WHO met in Kazakhstan in a first ever conference on primary health care. ‘Although the world is a healthier place for children today than ever before, close to six million children die every year before their fifth birthday mostly from preventable causes, and more than 150 million are stunted,’ said Dr Henrietta Fore, UNICEF executive director. ‘We as a global community can change that, by bringing quality health servicesRead More →

  By Isaac Ato MENSAH Accra- 26 October, 2018. The closure of KNUST is a management disaster; a public relations crisis. This week in my Management class, we discussed Bureaucracy in organisations. My students asked my views on the crisis at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST). I told them I didn’t know the details but I was sure it was a leadership crisis purely from the perspectives of organisational bureaucracy and public relations. The management structure of the KNUST at its apex is modelled on a tripartite system following international best practice; the chancellor, the vice chancellor and the university council. AtRead More →

By Isaac Ato MENSAH Accra- 24 October, 2018.   The World Health Summit (Berlin 2018) ended last week with many success stories. Intelligent glove Manovue won an award for using Artificial Intelligence to provide the visually impaired with a personal assistant! Germany pledged 115 million Euros to the World Health Organisation for the next four years. And, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine signed an MOU with the Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin to collaborate and identify joint research opportunities. “We welcome this new partnership with the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, one of the world’s leading centers for research and postgraduate education inRead More →

By Isaac Ato MENSAH Accra- 22 October, 2018. Jamal means beauty in Arabic. There are other variants; Jamel, Gamal or Gamel. At the current rate of international pressure with the latest confirmations by Turkey’s MIT and admissions by his native Saudi Arabia of what happened inside their Turkish embassy in Istanbul; let’s all agree that Jamal Khashoggi has been murdered. ‘Shut up if you want to return to Saudi Arabia’, one of the 15 trusty fellows dispatched by the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS), is heard saying, published www.theguardian.com on Sunday. Now let me do a Naeem. My friend Naeem Ahmed Abdul Ghafaar,Read More →

  By Isaac Ato MENSAH Accra- 20 October, 2018.   ‘I’m trapped in a Salvadore Dali painting”, thought Robert Langdon in the Da Vinci Code. Dan Brown’s character felt both a symbolic and surreal moment. That is how I feel right now about the final funeral rites of the late Oblempong Nii Kojo Ababio V, the king of James Town British Accra (Ngleshi Alata). Some in the media and elsewhere say they do not have a recent feel of him so they will not arrange any formal tributes nor programmes in his memory. Others such as the minister for chieftaincy affairs were informed of whoRead More →

By Isaac Ato MENSAH Accra- 18 October, 2018.   The Ghana Police Service (GPS) is not being managed properly; virtually every news item about them is miasma. This is not the case of the media giving them bad press. There are a series of bad decisions that have left all of us in a conundrum. It will be the eighth wonder of the world if David Asante-Appeatu, the IGP himself is not as puzzled as the rest of us. In the latest reshuffle of officers, Superintendent Cephas Arthur, the former public affairs director has been posted to head the Mamprobi District. Superintendent Cephas Arthur andRead More →

By Isaac Ato MENSAH Accra- 16 October, 2018. 1978 is recognized as the year of the three popes. Today is the 40th anniversary of the election of Pope John Paul II. On 6 August 1978, Pope Paul VI died. His successor, Pope John Paul I, on being elected reigned for only 33 days and died. Then on 16 October, 1978, Karol Josef Cardinal Wojtyla, was elected Pope. He chose the name Pope John Paul II to honour the memory of his predecessor. Pope John Paul II reigned until his death in April 2005. Pope John Paul II, visited Ghana in 1980, during the administration ofRead More →

By Isaac Ato MENSAH Accra- 14 October, 2018. I used to read about writers who say they’re moved to tears about a situation. Sadly that is how I now feel about Ghana. And I have to admit I used to challenge my mentor a lot; always eager to offer my ‘opinion’. But as JB Danquah’s poem says, ‘I engaged the English….and I loved them’. So I engaged my mentor in a vigorous fashion. Then a few years ago, he sent me a story about a train that had derailed in Accra, despite media publicity of the restoration of the Accra to Tema railway line. ‘IRead More →

By Isaac Ato MENSAH Accra- 10 October, 2018. The history of modern Public Relations practice affords many glorious and distasteful examples. The latter include public health disasters (for example, cigarette smoking and cancer) and armed conflict (example, the Iraq War). PR practice is not the preserve of specially trained and certified people, for, PR is human communication itself. ‘You cannot not communicate’, says the axiom of communication, which means all humans communicate and whatever they communicate, verbal or otherwise, will be analysed and acted on. The negative effects of modern PR practice which has its roots in the USA, are still with us. Today, Public RelationsRead More →