Infinity 970, with support from Breathe Cities, has stepped up public education on air pollution exposure and its health impact through the ‘Healthy Lungs, Healthy Life’ campaign, targeting communities across Accra.
The campaign seeks to educate residents on the major sources of air pollution in their communities, the health risks associated with exposure and practical steps they can take to protect themselves and improve air quality.
As part of the campaign, organisers on Thursday, August 27, 2025, engaged residents, transport workers, market women, community members and other stakeholders at La Township, near the Old Fraga Oil area, as they took the air pollution awareness drive directly into the community.
The engagement focused particularly on pollution from vehicle emissions, dust, open burning and waste disposal, with residents encouraged to recognise how everyday activities can contribute to the quality of air within their communities.
Speaking during the engagement, Breathe Cities Portfolio Manager, Dr. Elvis Kyere-Gyeabour, said the initiative had been running for about a year and a half and was expected to continue until the end of the year.
“This is one of the project we are currently supporting which is been led by infinity970. We have been running this campaign for a year and half now, it is expected to run until the end of the year,” he said.
He said the campaign had already engaged drivers, trotro mates and hawkers at Odawna, with some participants volunteering to become ambassadors for air pollution awareness.
“We had the first transport related engagement at Odawna, with the drivers, trotro mates, the hawkers and they were very excited with the information and knowledge and they even took the initiative for some of them to be ambassadors, when it comes air pollution,” he added.
The campaign has also engaged schoolchildren in Nima, Kanda and New Town as part of efforts to take the message beyond traditional media platforms and into communities.
Dr. Kyere-Gyeabour said the first phase of the campaign reached about seven million people through television and 2.5 million through radio, but stressed that direct community engagement remained important.
“We are still doing the community engagement because we feel it’s not just the TV and radio campaigns, we also want to interact with them and share the knowledge of how air pollution is affecting their health and the passengers they work with on the day to day basis,” he said.
A key focus of the campaign is open burning, which the organisers identify as one of the major sources of air pollution in Ghana and Accra.
La Dade-Kotopon Municipal Health Director, Dr. Caryn Agyeman Prempeh, said open burning of household waste, plastics and other materials exposes residents to harmful pollutants.
“Within our municipality, emissions from vehicles, which we can see around us today, dust construction activities, and particularly open burning of household waste, plastics, and other materials can expose our population to harmful pollutants,” she said.
She cautioned residents against burning waste as a means of dealing with refuse, stressing that the resulting smoke affects not only those who start the fire but people within the surrounding community.
“Let me bring it home, the fact that you are opening burning your waste because the waste management haven’t come for it and you think you are doing something good, you are not being kind to your sister or neighbour. These exposures can contribute to coughing, difficulty in breathing, which in asthmatic patients it’s not a nice thing for us at all,” she said.
Dr. Agyeman Prempeh further emphasised the wider impact of open burning on communities.
“We must remember that when waste is burned, the smoke does not remain where the fire is, it is part of the air we all breathe,” she said.
The organisers are consequently urging residents to avoid open burning and encourage others to stop the practice, while calling on communities to take greater responsibility for protecting the quality of the air they breathe.
The campaign also provides a channel for residents to report concerns about air pollution and open burning through its call and WhatsApp line, 0579724072.
The ‘Healthy Lungs, Healthy Life’ campaign is expected to continue with further community engagements as Infinity 970 and Breathe Cities seek to deepen public awareness of air pollution and its impact on health.
