Nkoranza South discusses maternal, infant deaths
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They were taken through topics such as the “importance of family planning, supervised delivery and exclusive breastfeeding, signs and symptoms of meningitis, yellow fever, polio and measles”.
The Nkoranza South Municipal Director of Health Services, Madam Salamatu Ibrahim, who addressed the participants, commended the community-based surveillance Volunteers for the commitment and voluntary services they offered to workers in the local health facilities in promoting the health of the people.
Madam Ibrahim emphasised that but for the support of the volunteers, the nurses in charge of the facilities would not have been able to visit the deprived communities to detect and attend to disease cases among the people.
She called on opinion leaders such as assembly members, unit committee members and religious leaders to support and encourage the volunteers in their activities in order that they would report strange and prevalent disease cases from the communities for early intervention.
Madam Ibrahim also advised the people to promote family planning campaigns in the communities and ensure that nursing mothers also attended antenatal and postnatal clinics to promote their health and their babies as well.
The Nkoranza South Municipal Health Information Officer, Mr Samson Addo, announced that the workshop also formed part of the government’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) which sought to combat maternal and infant mortalities in the communities by the year 2015.
Mr Addo urged nursing mothers to deliver at the health facilities under the supervision of midwives and doctors so as to free themselves from complications that could have adverse effects on their health.
He stressed the need for them to exclusively breastfeed their babies for six months before supporting them with other foods as that would prevent the children from contracting diarrhoea-related diseases.
Mr Addo also reiterated the need for nursing mothers to keep their babies in decent environment and take good care of them in order to guard them against communicable diseases.
By Samuel Duodu/Daily Graphic/Ghana