Dr Alfred Tia Sugre, the Deputy Minister of Heath, has said some 82,000 children die every year out of 1,000,000 live births in the country before they attain the age of five.

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W MAMPRUSI:Thousands of children die every year-DrTia Sugri

Dr Alfred Tia Sugre, the Deputy Minister of Heath, has said some 82,000 children die every year out of 1,000,000 live births in the country before they attain the age of five.


Date Created : 3/20/2014 4:20:41 PM : Story Author : GhanaDistrict.Com

Dr Alfred Tia Sugre, the Deputy Minister of Heath, has said some 82,000 children die every year out of 1,000,000 live births in the country before they attain the age of five.

He said the nation was losing its women and children annually due to limited access and quality healthcare and appealed to health personnel to strive hard to address the situation.

Dr Tia Sugre said this during the launch of Integrated Sanitation Hygiene and Nutrition for Education (I-SHINE) and Rural Emergency Health Services and Transport (REST) Project at Walawale in the West Mamprusi District.

The two projects, which were launched by the Catholic Relief Services (CRS), were to be implemented in six districts including, East and West Mamprusi, Mamprugu Moaduri in the Northern Region, Nabdam, Talensi and Kasena Nankana West in the upper East Region aimed at improving the overall health and well-being of some 1,000,000 people.

The I-SHINE project is to target some 120 community schools to reach 450,000 beneficiaries within three-year period.

The REST project is also estimated to reach out to 850,000 beneficiaries via health facilities and community based strategies to improve access and quality of healthcare for vulnerable women and children in 200 communities within three years from March this year to April 2017.

The programme was on the theme: Improving community health, education and well-being through an integrated approach.

Dr Sugre said the two projects would address the maternal mortality causes like delay in seeking healthcare, delay in reaching healthcare and also delay in the provision of quality healthcare.

He said the government had initiated work to upgrade a number of hospitals including the Central and Volta Regional hospitals to the status of teaching hospitals in order to expand the scope of training medical doctors and other healthcare specialists.

He said the government is in the process of transforming the Kintampo Rural Health Training Institute into a University College to support the training of physician assistants for ambulances and emergency services.

Dr Sugre called on both the government and the private sector to scale-up high impact in the health facilities and also to engage the people at the community level to change their negative attitude towards pregnant women to prevent deaths.

He said the government would establish an additional 1,600 CHIPS compounds across the country by the end of 2016 to help improve geographic access to health service especially for women and children.

Madam Lisa Washington-Sow, Country Representative of CRS, said the two projects were to focus on emergency response, agriculture and health in the six districts in the two regions.

She said poor sanitation impacted health, nutritional status and child growth also affected educational attainment and general health and wellbeing.

She said the Ghana Education Service and her outfit were working hand in hand to improve sanitation by forming 120 school health clubs and constructing tippy taps in schools and households in the six districts to enhance hand hygiene at critical times.

Madam Washington-Sow said 1,000 school counselors would be trained and deployed to serve as change agents among their peers by promoting and modeling good water, sanitation and hygiene practices.

GNA