NEWMOUNT HOLDS WORKSHOP ON COMMUNITY HEALTH (PAGE 39)

From Akwasi Ampratwum-Mensah, Fiapre

Sixteen participants, including chiefs and other selected stakeholders of health from the Asutifi and Tano North districts in the Brong Ahafo Region, have attended a five-day Community Integrated Management of Childhood Illnesses (C-IMCI) trainer of trainers workshop on the theme: “Improving the Health of our Communities through Partnership”.
 The programme sought to focus on diseases such as malaria, diarrhoea, acute respiratory infections, micro nutrient deficiency, measles and other vaccine-preventable diseases, excluding breast feeding, growth monitoring, helminthic infections as well as personal hygiene and other practices important for child health and development.
 Newmont Gold Ghana Limited (NGGL), operating the Ahafo Mine, organised the workshop in collaboration with the Ghana Health Service (GHS) and the Department of Community Health of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi at a cost of US$110,000.
Mr Joseph Danso, the Community Development Superintendent of NGGL, in an address said, the workshop was to help build the capacity of the two district health directorates and the communities in preventing child morbidity and mortality. He said the workshop demonstrated the company’s commitment to contributing to the healthy development of the people in the community that it operated.
He disclosed that the company sponsored the training of 26 service providers to be able to effectively manage cases of sexually transmitted infections (STI), while another 52 community-based volunteers were also trained in STIs, including HIV AIDS and tuberculosis last year.
 Dr Emmanuel Tenkorang, the Deputy Regional Public Health Director, pointed out that progress in child health in the region was very slow, stressing that 80 children per 1000 live births died before they attained age five every year.
“We need to drastically reduce child mortality by half before 2015, which is set in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)”, he noted.
The Head of the Department of Community Health of KNUST, Dr Easmon Otupiri also disclosed that 160 Children per 1000 live births died in Central and West Africa before they reached five years saying, that was the reason why the World Health Organisation (WHO) had designed the C-IMCI programme for Africa.