Kumasi, March 14, GNA -A five-day training workshop for district facilitators for the community-based growth project opened in Kumasi on Monday.

The workshop aims at building the capacities of district facilitators to enable them to assist in the training of community volunteers and to supervise the community-based growth promotion activities that are being piloted in 40 communities in the Ashanti Region.

It is being organised by the Ghana Health Service in partnership with the promoting Partnership With Traditional Authorities Project (PPTAP) of the Asanteman Council under its health sub-component. Speaking at the opening ceremony Nana Abena Akuamoa-Boateng, Ashanti Regional Nutrition Officer, said promoting child growth and development was in line with targets set in the millennium development goals by the United Nations (UN).

She said Ghana had not been able to bring down maternal and child mortality rates due to lack of basic information on child growth promotion by parents and community members. Nana Akuamoa-Boateng said the community-based growth project would therefore empower members in the local communities and provide them with information to enable them to protect their children. She thanked the PPTAP for supporting the project and called for the inclusion of food security component into the project to help reduce poverty that had been identified as the cause of malnutrition among children in rural communities.

Mr Kofi Poku, the Ashanti Regional Health Administrator, said the involvement of traditional authorities in health promotion was very crucial in achieving results and commended the Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II for the initiative.

Mr Johnson Osei-Hwedieh, Project Manager of PPTAP, said the project aims at promoting and enhancing effective and sustainable partnerships between the government and its agencies and the traditional authorities in the disadvantaged and remote rural communities. He urged the participants to take advantage of the training to improve their capacities to enable them provide appropriate information to members in the rural communities.