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Page last updated at Friday, December 30, 2011 12:12 PM //
The Akuapem North District recorded 6,730 teenage pregnancy cases from 2009 to November 2011.
The District Director of Health Services, Dr Opare Larbi, who disclosed this at a meeting of the assembly at Akropong on Thursday, described the situation as alarming and called for a rapid action to bring the situation under control.
He said records available indicated that most of the pregnancies occurred between September and December, which was the period for the celebration of annual Odwira and Ohum festivals.
Dr Larbi therefore called for concerted efforts from traditional authorities, religious bodies, non- governmental organizations and all stakeholders to find a lasting solution to the problem, to prevent young girls from entering into early adulthood.
He said malaria continued to be the major ailment confronting the health institutions in the area, recording as high as 83,235 cases between January and December this year as against 64,547 in 2010 and 52,224 in 2009.
Dr Larbi urged Assembly members to ensure that their communities kept their surroundings clean to avoid the breeding of mosquitoes, and also educate them on the need to sleep under treated mosquito nets.
He said the introduction of the Community Based Health Planning and Services (CHPS) project, had greatly contributed to the improvement of health services in the rural areas of the district.
Dr Larbi explained that, the CHPS concept, which was adopted in 1999, was aimed at reducing barriers to geographical access to health care with the initial focus on deprived and remote areas.
The concept was based on the transformation of the primary health care system by shifting to a programme of mobile community based care provided by a resident nurse as against the conventional facility-based and ‘outreach’ services.
He said a typical example was at Abonse, where the people previously had to travel for long distances to access health care at the Aseseeso Health Center, which was the only facility near them, but with the CHPS project, they were now better off.
Dr Larbi said the Ghana Health Services (GHS) was ensuring that at least every community would have a small health facility under the CHPS system.
He commended the people for collaborating with the GHS to provide accommodation for the nurses and other facilitators to make the programme a success.
The Akuapem North District Director of Education, Mr Benjamin Cronze, in a report to the assembly, said the results of the Basic Education Certificate Examination this year were poor.
He said his outfit had put in place measures to bring the situation under control.
Mr Cronze said it was unfortunate that the Akuapem area, which was noted for its academic excellence was now going through some challenges in education and appealed to all stakeholders to come on board to help solve the problems.
He attributed part of the problem to lack of commitment on the part of teachers, poor supervision and lack of parental control in the home and commitment of parents to the welfare of their wards.
Mr Cronze said his outfit had put in place monitoring teams in all the circuits to ensure that proper monitoring and supervision were carried out.
He cautioned that his outfit would not entertain any lackadaisical attitude from any teacher and urged them to work hard to improve the academic standards of the children.
Source: GNA