Ahwerewa (Ash), Aug. 10, GNA - Ms. Olivia Yeboah Oyinka, a Senior Staff Mid-wife and Head of the Community-Based Health Planning and Services (CHPS) compound at Ahwerewa, a farming community in the Sekyere East District, has stressed the need for key stakeholders to see access to health care services as a human rights issue.
She said the situation, where people living in rural communities found it difficult to access quality health care services in Ghana, violated their rights and that ought to end.
Addressing a team from the World Vision International Ghana (WVI-G), which visited the facility, Ms Oyinka pointed out that, strong interventions by government, NGOs and development partners were needed to address the inequality gaps in health care delivery.
The visit was to assess the impact of WVI-G’s health interventions in the area.
The Ahwerewa CHPS compound, the district’s only functional CHPS facility, which serves a population of about 1,720 in Ahwerewa and its adjoining communities of Bomso and Feyiase, was established by WVI-G in 2011.
The Sekyere East District has three hospitals, four health centres, two clinics and three CHPS compounds, but only one was functional across the 26 demarcated CHPS zones. The district has no maternity home.
However, a new maternity facility established at Okaikrom, also a farming community in the district, is yet to be functional since its construction last year.
The WVI-G, an international Christian NGO, with a core mandate of improving the lives of all children, especially the most vulnerable within families and communities, is working to improve access to primary health care, especially maternal and child health, nutrition, and HIV/AIDS through various interventions.
Among the interventions are the Mother to Mother Support Group (MTMSG), Savings for Transformation (S4T) and the Community Health Committees, among others.
The organization in 2017, provided the District Health Directorate with an amount of GH¢ 51,956.00 to support the training of health professionals to administer counselling on breastfeeding to mothers, build the capacities of adolescents on value-based life-skills and sexual reproductive health, as well as other health intervention programmes, to improve the health needs of the people.
Touching on the impact of the health facility on the people of the area, Ms. Oyinka said through the MTMSG, which facilitates the sensitization and education of health issues such as exclusive breastfeeding, diarrhoea prevention among babies between the ages of day 1 to six months, neo-natal deaths had reduced whiles ante-natal visits has also improved over the years.
She called for support from government and development partners to establish a maternity unit for the facility to enhance maternal health service delivery.
Mr. Micah Ayo Olad, the Health, Nutrition and HIV/AIDS Specialist of WVI-G, pledging continuous support of WVI-G to the district, said his organization would continue to build capacities and provide the requisite logistics to cause behavioural change among the people, especially those in deprived communities and strengthen the community health systems.
GNA
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