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 Beneficiaries being screened for blood pressure.
Beneficiaries being screened for blood pressure.

Female porters, market women benefit from health screening

Over 500 female porters (kayayei), their children, market women and the elderly in the La Nkwantanang Municipality in Accra have benefitted from a free health screening exercise.

Organised by HealthKeepers Network (HKN), a local non-governmental organisation, in collaboration with the La Nkwantanang Municipal Health Directorate, and with support from Pyxera Global, a non-governmental global health corporation, the beneficiaries were screened on the Body Mass Index (BMI), eye screening, HIV testing and counselling, deworming, malaria and a talk on family planning and cholera.

The sexually active were given condoms to help in protecting themselves from unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections.

HKN’s work

The Executive Director of the HKN, Mr Daniel E. Mensah, said the organisation works in 26 districts in the Northern, Greater Accra, Central, Western, Volta and Eastern regions, where it empowers deprived women with entrepreneurial skills.

The organisation, he said, trained and empowered women in family planning skills, HIV and AIDS counselling, adolescent reproductive health, the promotion of water and sanitation, child survival interventions, livelihood empowerment, and health promotion, among others such areas.

Mr Mensah said the health screening exercise was to offer free services to the head porters who hardly got time to go for routine check-ups.

He said those who needed further health assistance were referred to the health centre for further treatment.

Partnership

The Municipal Health Director, Ms Pricilla Anima Siva, demonstrated to the audience the proper way to wash their hands with soap and water and said the directorate was partnering the HKN to bring quality health care to the doorstep of the people.

In an interview, one of the beneficiaries, Madam Agnes Kromtu, an aged woman who went through the medical screening, commended HKN for its initiative, saying  she had not been able to seek medical treatment for her eyes because she did not have the resources to do so.

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