The Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) has extended its Breathe Life Campaign to cover three other communities in the city of Accra.

The communities are Korle Gonno, Bukom and Kaneshie in the Ablekuma South, Ashiedu Keteke and Okaikwei South Sub Metropolitan District Councils of AMA respectively, bringing the total number of five communities under the programme to seven.

The BreatheLife Campaign is a joint campaign led by the World Health Organization (WHO), United Nations Environment and the Climate & Clean Air Coalition (CCAC) with the aim to mobilize cities and individuals to protect the planet from the effects of air pollution.

The campaign combines public health and climate change expertise with guidance on implementing solutions to air pollution in support of global development goals to reduce deaths and diseases associated with air and climate pollutants.

At a stakeholders engagement to announce the extension of the campaign in Accra on Tuesday, the C40 City and Chief Sustainability Advisor to the Mayor of Accra, Desmond Appiah said the campaign was extended to ensure that other areas benefit from the project adding that "people who use to burn and dump waste into gutters now have the opportunity to dispose of it properly,”

He indicated that the campaign serves as an advantage for people to learn what it means to be exposed to the fumes and to show the linkage between those practices and the negative impacts on the population.

He advised residents to desist from waste burning, dispose of refuse appropriately as well as cutting down of trees.

The National Programs Officer of WHO Ghana, Gordon Dakuu, on his part said the extension of the campaign to other communities would go a long way to prevent pollution, mitigate the effects of climate change and multiple humanitarian crises in the city.

“The world is facing multiple health challenges. This ranges from outbreaks of vaccines preventable diseases such as measles and diphtheria, increasing reports of drug-resistant pathogens, growing rates of obesity and physical inactivity to the health impacts of environmental pollution, climate change and multiple humanitarian crisis,” he said.

A representative of Coalition of NGOs in Health, Bright Amissah-Nyarko said the coalition had sensitized residents in various communities on the effects of burning waste and organised quizzes and debates on environmental health in schools to improve the knowledge of climate change among students,” he said.

Mr Amissah-Nyarko urged the chiefs in the communities to continue to support the initiative by engaging the people to refrain from activities that will lead to air pollution in their areas.