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GARH launches child health promotion week

The Greater Accra Regional Hospital (GARH) yesterday held a short ceremony to launch the Child Health Promotion Week Celebration in Accra.

The week-long celebration was set aside to focus on creating awareness and intensifying efforts to increase knowledge, as well as improve health coverage for children, especially those, who would not usually be covered under routine outreach services.

At the launch. Dr Emmanuel Srofenyoh, Medical Director of GARH said caregivers would be educated on the need to ensure and sustain the provision of child survival interventions such as routine immunization, growth monitoring, promotion, educating on preventing malaria with insecticide-treated nets.

He encouraged the audience to access child health care service, with emphasis on nursing mothers.

Dr Srofenyoh urged all mothers and care givers to adhere to the guideline, protocols and key messages on antenatal and postnatal care, immunization, nutrition and others to help in the improvement in growth and development of new borns.

“Ghana has made substantial progress in child mortality reduction with immunisation being a major contributor to the achievements because immunisation does not only protect children from vaccine protected diseases, but also serve as platform to deliver other live-saving interventions such as vitamin A supplementation, distribution of insecticide treated nets, counselling among others.

“Vaccines prevented two to three million children from death annually worldwide, adding thatthe government through the Ministry ofHealth had secured childhood vaccines that had been in short supply recently, adding that, they were now available across the country,” Dr. Srofenyoh stated.

He explained that a number of children reported at health institutions daily with preventable conditions such as malaria, diarrhoea, measles and respiratory tract infections, but due to certain delays their conditions worsened and usually resulted in deaths which was very important for child health programmes to look beyond single diseases or disorders.

BY BENEDICTA GYIMAAH FOLLEY

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