Heavy investment and involvement in sports and recreation will help reduce health budget

Senior Advisor to the Sports Minister, Betty Crosby, has argued that heavy investment in sports and recreation will help reduce the health budget of the country.

Her premise for this argument is that if the country invests heavily in sports and recreation, there will be healthy citizens, which will, in turn, mean that the government will have to reduce the budget for health in the country.

Betty Crosby was speaking on Accra-based Pan African Television, where she espoused this opinion.

She explained that the current administration and handlers of the Sports Ministry are working hard and smart to secure the needed funding for the sector

“I think as a country, I think it is about time we moved away from the over-dependence on government subvention and looked for more innovative, more attractive ways of being able to resource our sports ecosystem. I believe that is what the current minister for sports and recreation is gearing towards. Like I earlier on stated, we have lauched a programme between the GFA and APL production which is going to be commentialized; a way of getting our premier leagues…he is not going to limit it to just football but other spors also.

We currently have cabinet acceptance to launch government sports fund which I beliebe very soon its regulations will be sent to parliament for approval and I think we will have some dedicated funds to support our sports. I think that is the way to go. Otherwise governments are looking at building schools, governments are looking at building hospitals and paying nurses. When you think about it in all, they feel that sports should be a secondary issue but we feel that if we are able to focus more and invest more in sports, some of this budget will reduce. I mean when we are actively able to get ourselves involved in sporting activities, we will build good health and the health budget will automatically reduce,” she argued.