TAKE ADVANTAGE OF CHILD CARE INTERVENTIONS (PAGE 30)

Story: Vincent Adedze, Tamale

THE Northern Regional Director of Health Services, Dr Akwasi Twumasi, has entreated mothers in the Tamale metropolis to take advantage of the numerous cost-effective interventions provided by the government through the Ghana Health Service (GHS) to help reduce the high infant mortality rates in the area.
“We have cost-effective interventions such as the immunisation programme and exclusive breast feeding but mothers are not taking advantage of these interventions,” the director noted.
Dr Twumasi stated this at a press briefing on this year’s Child Health Promotion Week in Tamale.
The briefing was aimed, among other issues, at increasing awareness about pertinent child health problems facing communities in the metropolis, particularly in areas where key child health indicators were critical.
He stated that the Northern, Upper East and Volta regions had the worst child health indicators in the country.
In the Northern Region for instance, 49 per cent of children under five years are malnourished while the region further recorded 150 infant mortality rates per 1000 live births last year.
Dr Twumasi further noted that “our key health indicators in the region is bad; in 2007 for instance the region recorded 115 maternal deaths per 1000 live births”.
The National Child Health Co-ordinator, Dr Isabella Sagoe-Moses, in a paper delivered on her behalf, mentioned diarrhoea, pneumonia, malaria, measles, AIDS and malnutrition as some of the causes of the high infant mortality rates.
According to her, mothers should ensure that they completed “their children’s immunisation before one year, ensure that the children sleep under insecticide treated nets every night and take in vitamin A supplements”.
Dr Sagoe-Moses entreated media practitioners to support current efforts at reducing malnutrition and other issues that affected child health in communities.
The National Programme Manager of Vitamin A, Madam Esi Amoaful, observed that a number of surveys conducted over the years had proven that vitamin A supplementation and exclusive breastfeeding were good for the health of children between the ages of one and two.
The Regional Director of the Department of Children, Mr Sumani Nayina, said “stakeholders must place a lot of emphasis on education campaign particularly among men to support efforts at promoting child health”.