Ho pregnancy school to serve pregnant teenagers

The Ho Asogli Queenmothers Association, with the support of the Programme for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH), has inaugurated a pregnancy school in Ho to serve as a monitoring team that will educate and encourage pregnant teenage girls to patronise maternal services at hospitals and health centres.

The initiative is also aimed at reducing maternal mortality and enlightening teenagers about the dangers of early sex.

Preventable deaths

Inaugurating the pregnancy school, the acting Medical Superintendent of the Volta Regional Hospital, Dr Lord Mensah, said the initiative was important to the health of the mother and the child in order to avoid preventable deaths, and pledged support from the health services to the intervention by the queenmothers to help reduce maternal and infant mortality.

Dr Mensah said there were some expectant women who did not appreciate the importance of going to be delivered of their babies at the hospital and assured them that it was the safest opportunity to save lives.

He appealed to mothers, families and the society at large to support the initiative of Ho Asogli Queenmothers to help address the problems associated with pregnancy and childbirth.

The Queenmother of Ho Dome, Mama Atrato II, advised pregnant women not to hide their pregnancies but to report to health facilities for medical care and share ideas among themselves to discuss situations that could result in complications.

Prayer camps

She said they should not refer their cases to prayer camps and urged pastors to encourage pregnant women to go to the hospital after prayers.

Mama Atrato said neonatal deaths had become an important component of deaths of children under five years and, therefore, extended appreciation to PATH and MOH/GHS towards addressing the problem of high under-five mortality, including the child health policy and strategy, Millennium Accelerate Framework, Accelerated Expanded Programme on Immunisation (EPI) and the introduction of vaccines.

Essence of immunisation

A Principal Public Health Nurse at the Public Health Unit of the Ho Municipal Assembly, Ms Vivian Tettevi, underscored the essence of immunising children under five years and said it was crucial to their survival.

She said weighing children at post-natal clinics was also crucial to their health because that could determine their weight and growth rate and determine whether they were under threat of any disease.