Kumasi, May 3, GNA - A three-day capacity building workshop for Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) offering support to Early Childhood Care and Development (ECCD)/ HIV/AIDS children, opened in Kumasi on Wednesday.

The workshop which is being organized by the Department of Children of the Ministry of Women and Children's Affairs, aimed at equipping the participants who are engaged in ECCD and HIV/AIDS to implement and oversee effective interventions for young children affected by HIV/AIDS and accelerate the response to the pandemic.

Speaking at the opening, Mr Peter Eduful, Acting Director of the Department of Children, said children were mostly innocent in the spread of the disease in the world, adding that, they got infected by their mothers during child birth and that affected their survival. He pointed out that, malnutrition that occurred during early childhood years caused irreversible stunting and impaired their cognitive function well into late childhood and said that should be of great concern to people, who had devoted their lives to support young children.

Mr Eduful identified lack of capacity building to respond to information in ECCD/HIV/AIDS intervention and mechanisms for channeling resources to support grass-root community-based programmes to protect and assist young children affected and infected by HIV/AIDS, as some of the major obstacles in tackling identified problems facing children. He urged the participants to take up the challenge to supplement government's efforts to protect children in the country. Mr Malize Adamu Issah, a resource person from UNICEF, said children should be considered as major component of society and should be given all the necessary attention they deserved.

He said ECCD was not only on child education, but everything that would help promote the total wellbeing of the child and urged the participants to identify vulnerable children and assist them.