Gomoa Oguaa, April 15, GNA - Twenty-two Community-Based Growth Promoters (CBGP) in Gomoa Oguaa in the Gomoa West Directorate of the Ghana Health Services were on Tuesday presented with logistics to aid their work. The package which included bicycles, Wellington boots, rain coats and first aid boxes were donated by the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) in collaboration with the Ghana Health Services, to support CBGP also known as health volunteers, in implementing the Integrated Management of Children Illness (IMCI) and growth promotion programmes. The IMCI is a GHS intervention to curb the mortality rate among children under five years, with special reference to those less than two years.

The identified illnesses include measles, malaria, diarrhoea, acute respiratory infection and malnutrition. Ms Gifty Ankrah, Gomoa West District Director of the GHS, at the presentation ceremony at Gomoa Oguaa, said the CBGP was an important concept not only for GHS but also to the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the UNICEF in arresting the morbidity and mortality rate in the country. She said the health volunteers or the CBGP had been trained to detect symptoms of the illnesses and to arrange for the prompt referral to the nearest health facilities.

"The training the CBGP received is to afford them the opportunity to serve as links between their communities and health facilities," Ms Ankrah said and appealed to the communities to support them to deliver. Miss Sarah Sarkwa, District Public Health Nurse, cautioned the volunteers against holding themselves as qualified nurses and not attempt to prescribe treatment for cases detected. She appealed to them to use the items for the purposes they were donated for, which is their outreach activities. She said 111 Growth Promoters from 62 communities in the district had been trained for the IMCI.