Health experts discuss ways to prevent childhood diseases
Health practitioners from West Africa are meeting in Accra to map out strategies to prevent, control and eradicate poliomyelitis (polio) and other childhood diseases from the sub-region.
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The programme managers of the Expanded Programme on Immunisation (EPI) are expected to share best practices and come up with a strategy to implement intervention programmes.
Speaking at the opening of the three-day meeting, the Director-General of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), Dr Anthony Nsiah-Asare, said following the introduction of the EPI programme in 1978, there had been a decline in early childhood diseases.
For instance, he said, there had not been any reported deaths from measles in Ghana since 2003, while pneumonia and other diseases among children had also been reduced.
As a result, he said, child survival had significantly improved, with infant mortality declining from 111 per 1,000 live births in 2003 to 50 per 1,000 live births as of 2012.
More collaboration
Dr Nsiah-Asare said despite the progress, efforts should be intensified to ensure the speedy delivery of vaccines for the prevention of polio and other childhood diseases.
That, he said, was crucial because “there are so many unimmunised children, especially in urban and peri-urban areas”.
He urged the EPI programme managers to extend vaccines to every child in every community to meet the target of every child a vaccine.
Innovative ways
The Minister of Health, Mr Kwaku Agyeman-Manu, in a speech read on his behalf, said Ghana and the other countries in the sub-region were almost at the end of the struggle to eradicate polio and other childhood-related diseases.
He attributed the success to the sustained education mounted by health practitioners on the diseases.
He urged the EPI programme managers to come up with more innovative ways to address the lingering challenges facing the polio eradication campaign.
He affirmed the commitment of the government to continue to offer financial support to polio prevention, control and eradication efforts.
Mr Agyeman-Manu urged the media to publicise the benefits of immunisation to encourage more people to send their children to be immunised.
