Japanese organisation trains 63 on maternal health
The Japanese Organisation for International Cooperation in Family Planning (JOICFP) has begun a three-day regional dissemination workshop in Koforidua for 63 participants from Ghana, Zambia and Japan on protecting the lives of pregnant women in Africa.
The training is under the Takeda Global CSR programme.
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The three-day programme is being attended by community volunteers from Ghana and Zambia, officials of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), officials of seven district assemblies in Ghana, and representatives of JOICFP, the Japanese Embassy and the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA).
Objectives
The main objective of the three-day community-centred sustainable health promotion programme, is to increase the quality of health of women of reproductive age and children under five years in Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania and Zambia, which are the beneficiary countries of the JOICFP Project in Africa.
The JOICFP Project started five years ago with funding from Takeda, a pharmaceutical company in Japan.
Quality health
The Country Director of JOICFP, Emmanuel Obeng, said the organisation had over the years worked to promote the quality of health of women and children.
Quality health care, he said, was a crucial element in any sustainable development drive and, therefore, it was important for all stakeholders to make it accessible to everyone, especially the vulnerable such as women and children.
Enabling environment
The Coordinator for Development Cooperation of the Japanese Embassy in Ghana, Musah Ibrahim, said Japan was committed to sustainable healthcare systems both at home and abroad.
He said Japan had over the years introduced policies and committed enormous resources aimed at helping to create a sustainable healthcare system suitable for Africa with the view to achieving Universal Health Coverage on the continent.
Some of the initiatives, he said, included the project for protecting the lives of pregnant women in Africa, which sought to reduce maternal mortality rate in Africa.
He lauded JOICFP, Takeda Pharmaceutical Company and other partners in the project for their commitment to accelerate actions towards improving the overall health and well-being of children and mothers.
Lessons
A Board Member of the Trsutees of JOICFP, Tetsuya Mabuchi, thanked the respective ministries and agencies in the four countries and the respective Embassies of Japan for the support and encouragements given to the project.
He stressed the need for the participants to take the good practices and the lessons more serious as they went back to their various countries.
Dissemination
In a speech read on her behalf, the Director of Policy Planning Monitoring and Evaluation of GHS, Dr Mrs Alberta Biritwum Nyarko, said the project would go a long way to improve the quality of health of women and children.
The GHS, she said, was looking forward to disseminating the achievements, the best practices and project findings over the past five years across all the implementing countries, as well as plan towards the sustainability of the project.