By Muniratu Akweley Issah, GNA
Accra, May 13, GNA – Dr Patrick Kuma-Aboagye, the Director General (DG) of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), has urged mothers and caregivers to take cognisance of the health and wellbeing of their children, particularly, their vaccination and nutritional needs.
Dr Kuma-Aboagye said being conscious of the progress of babies and adhering to their nutritional needs and growth rate was key to ensuring total protection, to safeguard the future of these children.
The DG gave the advice when the GHS and partners toured the Child Welfare Clinics (CWC) at Abokobi and Agbogba Health and outreach Centres in the Ga East Municipality.
The monitoring formed part of activities to respectively commemorate the African Vaccination Week, Child Health Promotion week and COVID-19 campaign week, and him to familiarise with activities at the various facilities.
The first point visited was at Abokobi Health Centre and Child welfare Clinc (CWC) and later visited the Agbogba outreach centre, being operated within a Church premises, with services rendered including; immunisation, weighing, education and counselling on nutrition and family planning, Covid-19 vaccination, and Births registration.
Dr Kuma-Aboagye interacted with the health workers at the facilities, commended their efforts, and encouraged them to improve upon their services, while advising the mothers and caregivers to pay attention and take keen interest in the development of their children.
He emphasised the need to intensify education and counselling on vaccination, nutrition, and family planning services for caregivers to enhance their knowledge on knowing what to do at the right time.
“It is important to check the growth rate of their children, checking to see if the child is doing well or not, educating them on the type of food to eat and when to eat is very critical,” he said.
Briefing the media, Dr Kuma-Aboagye said it was necessary for the sector to monitor the progress of the CWC and the various services being offered to the people, to identify progress, challenges, and the way forward for health sector growth.
He said by observation, the municipality which was a densely populated area needed more outreach centres to beef up operations for better reach to all the communities within the area.
The team also visited the Taifa Community, also within the Ga East municipality, where COVID-19 vaccines were being administered, as part of the COVID-19 vaccination week campaign.
“This is the usual campaign to achieve herd immunity. We set a target of 20.7 million to be fully vaccinated, which will ensure adequate protection for all,” he stated.
“So far, we have had about 57 per cent of the population fully vaccinated and 71 who have taken one short only, which means that we still have a large population to cover to ensure total protection for all citizenry, the embarking on the campaign to capture everyone just as the routine vaccination on child welfare,” he added.
Dr Frankline Asiedu Bekoe, the Director of Public Health, GHS, also entreated the mothers and the public to adhere to the safety protocols while urging them to come out in their numbers to take the jabs, as the highly trusted measure of preventing the diseases.
He said the virus was still existent, hence, accepting the vaccines and adhering to the protocols were necessary.
The Director General was accompanied by Dr Franklin Asiedu-Bekoe, the Director of Public Health, Dr Kwame Amponsa-Achianu, Programme Manager for the Expanded Programme on Immunisation (EPI) and Dr Marion Okoh-Owusu, the Director of Health Promotion.
The rest were Dr Michael Adjabeng, the Surveillance Officer, World Health Organisation (WHO) Ghana, Dr Akosua Agyeiwaa Owusu- Sarpong, the Greater Accra Regional Director of Health, and Dr Selorm Botwe the Municipal Health Director, Ga East, among others.
GNA