'Take immunisation programmes seriously' (Back Page)

THE National Child Health Co-ordinator of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), Dr Isabella Sagoe-Moses, has called on Ghanaians to take immunisation programmes seriously.
That, she said, was to ensure the protection of children, especially those under five, from preventable deaths.
Speaking at the launch of this year’s Integrated Maternal and Child Health Campaign in Accra yesterday, Dr Sagoe-Moses cautioned that Ghana faced the threat of importing poliomyelitis from neighbouring African countries.
She said the deadly childhood disease, which had not affected any Ghanaian child since September 2003, was reported to have been affecting children in Nigeria.
Poliomyelitis, often called polio or infantile paralysis, is an acute viral infectious disease spread from person to person, primarily through the faecal-oral route.
Polio epidemics have crippled thousands of people, mostly young children, and caused paralysis and death throughout much of human history.
Dr Sagoe-Moses said as of March 5, 2008, 32 wild cases of poliomyelitis had been reported in Nigeria, three in Niger, one in Angola and one in Chad.
Reports have it that Ghana has also not recorded any death from measles since 2002 and that there was a drop in the number of measles cases from 34,671 in 1994 to 434 in 2005.
She said, however, that people should not be complacent over these achievements but rather remain vigilant and also try hard to sustain the gains so far achieved.
Dr Sagoe-Moses said during the campaign, which is scheduled from October 16 to October 18, 2008, a series of services would be provided for children free of charge.
She said children under five would be given Vitamin A supplement, immunised against tuberculosis, poliomyelitis, diphtheria, pertusis, tetanus, yellow fever, Hepatitis B and Haemophilia influenza and also dewormed.
As part of the campaign, children below one year in the three northern regions and the Central Region would be offered free insecticide-treated nets as a top up to what had already been distributed to children throughout the country in earlier programmes to prevent malaria.
Speaking on the theme, “Healthy Mother and Children Make a Better Ghana”, a Deputy Minister of Health, Dr (Mrs) Gladys Norley Ashietey, said it was important for Ghanaians to realise that although they had invested and continued to invest in revamping the health systems, the country still had a long way to go in order to respond to the needs of every family.
She noted that campaigns such as Integrated Maternal and Child Health were designed to overcome some of the inherent challenges and obstacles that made it difficult to reach those who, for some reasons, were not able to take up services within the routine system.
The Director-General of the GHS, Dr Elias K. Sory, who chaired the function, said since it had been established that the routine services provided by health workers at the various facilities alone could not help solve the nation’s health problems, people would be encouraged to take advantage of such special annual programmes.
The Deputy Director-General of the GHS, Dr George Amofah, expressed the hope that Ghana would be able to achieve the Millennium Development Goal four (MDG 4) which touched on child health, adding that the country was on its way to eliminating many childhood diseases.