Anyinam (E/R), May 28, GNA - The East Akim District Child Health Promotion Week celebration was on Friday launched at Anyinam in the Eastern Region, with a call on health workers to provide health services to the public especially children and exhibit high sense of professionalism to ensure good health delivery system in the country. The East Akim District Chief Executive, Mr Emmanuel Asihene who made the call stressed that, since children are the future leaders of the country, there was the need to protect them from all forms of diseases.

The week was set aside to focus on the provision of a minimum package of services to children under five years to improve efficiency of health service delivery, quality of care and coverage of service to children through the immunisation against tuberculosis, measles, tetanus, whooping cough, hepatitis and polio myelitis. The children will also receive Vitamin "A", which will prevent them from blindness and build up immunity against diseases.

Mr Asihene called on mothers to register their children at birth, since birth registration in Ghana is free and compulsory by law as well as very important in national development. According to him, about 13 million children under five years of age die annually from vaccine preventable and other diseases such as measles, whooping cough, neo-natal tetanus, diarrhoea, malaria and acute-respiratory infection.

He pointed out that, the major break through of recent years is the realisation that mosquito nets treated with insecticide provide a higher degree of protection against malaria, adding that properly used insecticide treated nets could reduce malaria transmission by at least 50 per cent and child deaths by 20 per cent.

The East Akim District Director of Health Services, Dr Eunice Abuaku called on stakeholders including traditional rulers, politicians, religious bodies, departments, agencies and parents to play active roles in meeting the challenge of ensuring a healthy Ghana through sustained development of healthy children and to ensure that the children who are the future leaders are prevented from premature deaths.

She explained that the Child Health Promotion Week was an initiative of the Ghana Health Service to create awareness in the development drive as a nation.

Dr Abuaku urged mothers to register their children at birth to enable their growth to be monitored to ensure their survival, promote exclusive breastfeeding and good weaning practices on high protein diet and sanitation campaign to prevent diarrhoea and water related diseases. The Chief of Adasewase, Osabarima Kwame Tia 11, who chaired the function advised parents to take good care of their children to become healthy and also invest in their education to serve as asset for them in future.