Laboratories of health facilities in three Northern Regions to be improved

Wedana (U.E) Nov 1, GNA - Government is taking steps to strengthen the capacity of reference laboratories at health facilities in the Upper West, Upper East and Northern Regions.

Mrs Lucy Awuni, Upper East Deputy Regional Minister, who announced this, said the move was to reduce the delay and cost of sending specimen to Accra for laboratory examination.

She was speaking at the Upper East Regional launch of the Integrated Measles Supplementary Immunisation campaign at Wedana near Bawku, on the theme: 'Measles can kill, Immunize Your Child Now'.

Mrs Awuni said that over 4,300,000 children between the ages of nine and 59 months were targeted throughout the country for immunization while Upper East alone was aiming at 274,409 children for the exercise. She noted that the introduction of childhood immunisation against the disease had brought dramatic decrease in measles morbidity and death in the country.

Mrs Awuni said measles could cause blindness, retarded growth, epilepsy, and learning disability and called on parents to embrace the upcoming exercise towards the elimination of the disease from the country.

Dr. James Akpable, Deputy Upper East Regional Director of Health Services, noted that although measles basically occurred among children, one could get infected at any age. He said measles was a virus that could be transmitted by direct or through airborne droplets when an infected person sneezed, coughed, or talked.

Dr. Akpable said that after infection, incubation period of nine to twelve days takes palace before symptoms occur. He said that 381 teams of health workers and 1110 volunteers would be engaged in the exercise, which begins from 3rd to 6th November 2010.

A team from Togo led by Mr Bariyere Gnimpal in charge of vaccination in the savannah region of that country called on the people of Ghana and Togo to support the fight against measles in the two countries.

He gave the assurance that Togolese would be immunized before entering Ghana and asked Ghanaians authorities to do same for its citizens before entering Togo.