The Bibiani- Anhwiaso-Bekwai Municipal Health Directorate of the Ghana Health Service (GHS) has held its Annual review meeting for 2019 with a call on all stakeholders in the health sector, to take matters of health seriously.

Mr. Sahib Abdul Rahman, Municipal Co-coordinating Director (MCD) for the Bibiani - Anhwiaso-Bekwai Municipal Assembly (BABMA) made the call when he officially opened the one –day meeting.

He said health was life and wealth and there was the need to pay critical attention to the sector, noting that it was for this reason that health and education always took a chunk of the Assembly’s expenditure.

The Coordinating Director urged traditional and community leaders in the municipality, to support health workers in their areas to deliver effective healthcare services for the development and transformation of the municipality.

Mr. Abdul Rahman commended the Municipal Health Directorate and its key players, for their sterling performances during the year under review and over the years and urged them to keep up the spirit as their theirs calling was from heaven.

Giving an overview of the Directorate’ s performance during the year under review, Dr. Francis Boakye Takyi, the Municipal Director of Health Services, revealed that there were no cases of Malaria related deaths in all the health facilities of the Directorate during the reviewing year of 2019.

Cases of Still births reduced to 36 in 2019 as against 70 cases in 2018, while total supervised deliveries increased from 5,362 in 2018 to 5,372 in 2019.

Outpatient Department (OPD) attendance shot up from 344,164 in 2018 to 354, 922 during the reviewing year, while the health facilities hosted 316,878 Insured Attendance as against 38,044 non –insured during the reviewing year.

Dr. Takyi enumerated: inadequate medical equipment, lack of a fence wall around the Municipal Hospital, lack of modern operating Theatre, high still births and high teenage pregnancies.

The others were inadequate vaccine refrigerators, high rate of Anaemia in pregnancy, inadequate community support and participation in health services, as some of the key challenges facing health facilities in the Directorate.

He urged the health workers in his outfit to continue with their hard work, to maintain the good image of the directorate in the Western North Region and the entire Ghanaian health delivery landscape.