Tinniabelle(UWR), April 9, GNA - The Catholic Relief Service (CRS) in collaboration with the Ministry of Health and the Ghana Health Service have made significant improvements in the health and nutritional status of children and their mothers in the Upper West Region. Health indicators were showing that the CRS and its partners have work assiduously to increase the levels of exclusively breastfeeding of children from a baseline value of 16.6 percent to 72.5 percent during the past five-years. The level of malnutrition, resulting in the stunning growth of children, wasting and underweight have been reduced from 22.0 percent, 10.2 per cent and 17.4 percent respectively at a baseline to 17.5 per cent 8.7 percent and 17.6 percent in 2006 over the same period. Immunisation of children against childhood killer diseases has also increased from 46.1 per cent to 58.0 percent. Mr Mohammed Ali, a Senior Programme Officer of CRS in charge of Health, in the Northern, Upper West and Upper East Regions made these known at the launch of the Wa East District health community child survival campaign activities at Tinniabelle on Tuesday. He said the achievement had been made possible through USAID assisted funds that helped the CRS to carry out food assisted child survival programmes, utilizing the systems and structures of the Ghana Health Service operated child welfare clinics and the Nutrition Rehabilitation Centres. The programme covered about 212 outreach points and 23 focused nutrition centres across the eight districts in the Northern Regions.

Mr Ali said the CRS and Ghana Health Service had adopted several strategies involving community active participation in sharing of knowledge and information on health and nutrition issues that helped them to overcome the barriers and challenges encountered from the programme over the years. He however said despite these modest gains, many children in the region were still dying due to the incidence of malaria, anaemia, and diarrhoea cases as well as child malnutrition related diseases. Mr Ali called on district assemblies in the Northern Regions to conscious effort to support the issues that promote or inhibit utilization of health services to help reduce maternal and child mortality and enhance quality of live for the children and their mothers.

He urged the Ghana Health Service to continuously strengthen their surveillance systems to ensure that children who were not captured during immunisation periods were immunized. Mr Ali said the CRS believed that the success or failure of any programmes, and their sustainability depended largely on how supportive and involved communities were to the programmes. He said it was for this reason that the CRS adopted the strengthening of community structures and systems approach which helped the CRS to break the social, economic and psychological barriers that impeded access and utilization of health services. 9 April 08