By Rita
Dakura, GNA
Nabango (UE), Oct 1, GNA – The Rural
Initiative for Self-Empowerment-Ghana (Rise Ghana), a Non-Governmental
Organisation (NGO) has advocated for a mother and newborn healthcare delivery
at the community level under its Mother Baby Friendly Health Facility
Initiative (MBFHI) project.
The project, funded by the Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation in collaboration with the United Nations Initiative for
Children Education Fund (UNICEF) and the Ghana Health Service (GHS), is aimed
at reducing maternal newborn and infant deaths and to improve on facility-based
quality care.
Mr Ahmed Kariama Awal, Director for
Rise-Ghana, addressing an advocacy meeting at Nabango in the Kasena-Nankana
West District in the Upper East Region, noted that the project sought to
increase optimal breastfeeding practices, support countries to develop,
implement and monitor in real-time cost data, encourage pregnant adolescent
women and health workers to be friendlier to mothers and newly born babies.
Mr Awal said the project would provide the
platform to encourage mothers to register their children immediately after
birth so as to promote quality maternal health delivery in the area.
He mentioned that the Nabango community had
benefited from the Rise-Ghana project through the education given to pregnant
women to visit health centres regularly for antenatal services before delivery
and said it had improved on maternal and newborn healthcare.
Naaba Ben Atugba, Chief of the area, said the
CHPS Compound now has tricycle ambulance donated to the Nabango community
health centre by the Korean International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) through
the Ghana Health Service and indicated that health workers could now have
access to the homes of pregnant women to provide health service.
Naaba Atugba, however, lamented on the poor
road network in the area, and said the conditions of the roads made it
difficult for health workers to access the area and provide quality healthcare
services at the door steps of the people, especially pregnant women.
“We cannot get access to the various homes due
to poor road network, most of the people in the community have no means of
transport. Sometimes, mothers are compelled to deliver on the way and this has
become challenging in the community”.
He challenged the community members to see the
community as their own, and asked the people of Nabango to develop the
community by themselves without waiting on any development agency to do so for
them. This he said could be done if they dedicated time and resources to ensure
development in the community.
He
called on the people to exhibit the sense of communal spirit by coming out in
their numbers to assist work on the road to enable the community put its
ambulance into use.
Mr Johnson Avalumboya Assembly member for the
area urged the community members to come out in their numbers to help undertake
self-development projects including maintenance of the community’s roads.
He further called on health authorities there
to provide the community with a midwife to fill in the vacant space as the
community CHPS compound and urged other development partners to provide the
community with a residential accommodation for health workers since the only
one they had got burnt long time ago.
GNA