By Yussif Ibrahim
Kumasi, Nov. 8, GNA – The Ashanti Regional Health Directorate has adopted a child focused strategy as part of efforts to build a sustainable COVID-19 recovery in the region.
The Directorate with funding support from the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF), has supported 16 selected basic schools in the region to sustain their school health club activities.
The goal is to encourage the children to sustain the hand hygiene protocols inculcated in them at the peak of the pandemic so they can serve as agents of change in society.
All the selected schools observed the global hand washing celebration in October during, which they created public awareness on the benefits of continuing to observe the hand hygiene protocols.
As part of efforts to sustain the culture of hand hygiene in the schools, the Directorate has provided each school with large quantities of liquid soaps and tissue papers at a short ceremony in Kumasi.
They were educated on the importance of maintaining the hand hygiene protocols as a way of life beyond COVID-19.
The expectation is that they will influence behavioural change in society by cultivating the habit of hand washing at younger age.
Dr Emmanuel Tinkorang, the Regional Director of Health Services, said resilience mattered now more than ever in health care, with COVID-19 putting health care providers under unprecedented strain.
He said the pandemic had been a major setback for the global economy of which Ghana was not an exception, saying that building resilience was vital to the recovery from the pandemic.
The Regional Director indicated that good hygiene was a highly cost-effective public health measure that was also crucial to a range of diseases like COVID-19, pneumonia and diarrhoea.
“It is against this background that the Directorate is raising awareness about hand washing with soap among the populace using school children as change agents,” he noted.
GNA