Two regions get community health coalitions
Two community health coalitions have been inaugurated at Amasaman in the Ga West Municipality in Greater Accra and Asenema in the Akuapem North District of the Eastern Region.
Advertisement
The 42 members of the two Coalitions have been trained to help educate women and young girls on the importance of accessing quality healthcare when pregnant, to bring down maternal mortality cases in the two districts and in the country as a whole.
Although there has been some progress made in the country in achieving the United Nation’s (UN) Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 5 of reducing maternal mortality rate to 185 per every 100,000 live births by 2015, the gains made, according to the Women in Law and Development (WiLDAF) Ghana, initiators of the community health Coalitions in the Greater Accra and Eastern regions, are snail’s pace.
Statistics
In Ghana, between 1990 and 2005, the maternal mortality rate reduced from 740 per 100,000 live births to 503. It declined further to 451 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2008 and by 2010 the figure had reduced to 350 per 100,000 live births.
Enumerating factors such as unsafe abortions, poverty and proximity to health facilities, malnutrition, customs and tradition as some of the contributory factors to the country’s high maternal mortality rate, WiLDAF says there is the need to tackle the situation from the root cause, to enable the country achieve the MDG5 target by 2015.
Inauguration of coalitions
Working towards the attainment of that objective, WiLDAF inaugurated the two coalitions after training 21 facilitators and another 23 for 10 communities each in the Ga West Municipality and Akuapem North Districts.
The communities to benefit from the work of the facilitators in Ga West are Obeyeyie, Afuaman, Katapor, Otsirikonkonfo, Donkoman, Nsakinaa, Ayikai Doblo, Dedeiman, Bordumase and Oduman; and those in the Akuapem North District include Asasekorkor, Bewase, Yensiso, Duase, Beware, Atsikor, Kwamoso, Korkormu, Addo Nkwanta and Saforo.
The target groups for the coalitions are women, teenage girls, parents of teenage pregnant girls, traditional leaders and community health personnel.
Other Trending Stories
A Programmes Manager at WiLDAF, Mr Frank Bodza, who briefed the Daily Graphic after the inauguration at Amasaman, said the project, which was on the theme: “Maternal Healthcare in Community Hands,” was an European Union-funded three-year project, aimed at encouraging women and young girls to access health facilities when pregnant.
Members of the coalition who were made up of people from the various local communities, he said, had also been trained to educate young girls to abstain from early sex to help prevent them from getting pregnant.
He said the focus of the project was prevention of early sex and early pregnancy, but added that girls who were affected by these problems needed to access quality healthcare to avoid abortions.
EU support
Addressing the programme at Amasaman, Programme Officer, Governance Section of the Delegation of the European Union in Ghana, Mr Joseph Allan Bogrebor, said the EU was supporting the government to improve on healthcare in the country.
So far, he said, the EU had allocated a total of 52 million euros to support health service delivery in the country.
He said the EU was also supporting civil society groups in its advocacy roles to help the government improve on the healthcare needs of its people.
Mr Bogrebor said the EU also supported community-based projects to help improve on the living conditions of people.