By Comfort Sena Fetrie-Akagbor
Tamale, Dec. 13, GNA – Stakeholders in the education sector have been urged to strengthen the monitoring of caterers and food vendors at schools to ensure food safety and quality nutrition for children.
Mrs Theresa Oppong-Mensah, Director of School Health Education Programme (SHEP), who made the call, said monitoring of the School Feeding Programme caterers must form part of the regular assessment of nutritional status of schoolchildren.
She was speaking during a three-day capacity training workshop for SHEP Coordinators from the Ghana Education Service (GES) and Adolescent Health Focal Persons to effectively deliver Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) education under the SHEP.
It was organised in Tamale by Youth Advocates Ghana as part of the Youth for Health (Y4H) project to identify schools to set up Adolescent Health Clubs.
Madam Oppong-Mensah said it was the duty of stakeholders to enlighten the school children on prevention and management of diseases such as HIV and AIDS as well as motivate them to become change agents to their peers.
She called on stakeholders to promote effective school-community and parent-teacher partnerships to enhance the health and development of children.
Mr Ernest Amoah Ampah, Programme Officer at SHEP Unit at Ghana Education Service urged parents and teachers to provide information to students on negotiating skills to resist peer influence that often led them into sexual relationships.
Mr Emmanuel Ametepey, Executive Director of Youth Advocates Ghana said the project was one of the European Commission’s flagship projects to expand access to life-changing adolescent sexual and reproductive health care in rural and hard-to-reach areas in six countries in Africa being implemented from 2022 to 2025.
He said the Y4H project sought to increase demand for access to, high-quality, discrimination free Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (ASRHR), information and services, increase public sector willingness to deliver and sustain high-quality ASRHR information and services, improve enabling policy and funding environment at regional, national, and sub-national levels.
He said the project was being implemented in the country by Marie Stopes Ghana and Youth Advocates Ghana (YAG) in the Northern and Upper East Regions.
He added that YAG led on the implementation of the Reproductive Health Education pilot for in-and-out of school adolescents.
GNA