GHS Administers Iron Supplement to 65,208 Adolescent Girls

By
Godfred A. Polkuu, GNA

Bolgatanga, July 18, GNA – The Upper East
Regional Health Directorate has successfully administered 65,208 adolescent girls
with multivitamin supplements to boost their immune system against iron
deficiency.

The Girls’ Iron-Folate Tablet Supplementation
(GIFTS), is a programme run by the Ghana Health Service in the Upper East
Region to ensure that in-school and out of school menstruating adolescent girls
in the region, were protected against anaemia.

The GIFTS programme was piloted in four
regions of the country including the Upper East Region by the Ghana Health
Service (GHS) with support from the United Nations International Children’s
Emergency Fund (UNICEF), World Health Organization (WHO), the Canadian government,
the Centre for Disease Control (CDC), the United States Agency for
International Development (USAID), the Korea International Cooperation Agency
(KOICA) and the Ghana Education Service (GES).

The intervention, which started in October
2016, is expected to end in 2019. It is aimed at reducing and preventing
anaemia by 20 percent in women of childbearing age, and adolescents through
weekly iron and folic acid supplementation.

At a stakeholder review meeting held in
Bolgatanga, Dr Winfred Ofosu, the Upper East Regional Director of Health
Services, said the ongoing programme involved a weekly distribution of Iron and
Folic Acid (IFA) supplements to all adolescents aged 10 to 19 years on every
Wednesday, known as “GIFTS Wednesday” across all public Junior and Senior High
Schools in the region.

He said the Directorate targets to administer
97,608 adolescent girls by the end of the programme, but had so far reached out
to 65,208, and indicated that the intervention was meant to build the iron and
folate stock of the girl child, which would prevent postpartum hemorrhage when
they grow into adulthood and ready for childbirth.

Dr Ofosu indicated that “Iron and folic are
very important elements in the formation of blood, but these alone are not
sufficient. We need to educate them on the need to eat nutritious food because
you need protein to help in forming the blood.”

According to him, anaemia reduces
concentration levels in children in the classroom, and makes them inactive, and
said the programme would serve a dual purpose of boosting blood levels and
further improving concentration levels in the children.

He expressed optimism that the intervention
would help prevent maternal deaths and improve maternal health because, “we
know that anaemia affects even the developing child.”

Dr Ofosu recalled some misconceptions by
parents that the supplements were family planning contraceptives and urged
nurses on the field to continue sensitising community members on the purpose
and importance of the GIFTS.

Dr Priscilla Wobil, a Health and Nutrition
Specialist with UNICEF office in the Northern Region, said one key intervention
of UNICEF, was to prevent anaemia in adolescent girls and pregnant women as
much as possible, and noted that the focus was on girls, because they were at
higher risk of being anaemic due to menstruation.

She reiterated that anaemia affected the
academic performance of adolescent girls, adding that “if they grow and are
still anaemic, they could have several complications when they are pregnant.

“Some of the problems could be that, the baby
may be born too small or too early because the mother may go into labour early
and give birth to a preterm baby, and preterm babies have challenges
surviving.”

Dr Wobil noted that bleeding during pregnancy or
birth was one of the major complications that resulted in deaths, adding that,
“if the mother is already anaemic, it poses a higher risk of death to the
mother, so GIFTS is looking at both the health status, the nutritional status
and the educational status of the girl child.”

GNA

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