SEND Ghana trains community maternal health champions
SEND Ghana, a policy research and advocacy organisation, has organised a two-day intensive training on maternal health for 27 community maternal health champions.
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The training, which is under the organisation’s Improve Project, is to empower participants to serve as maternal health ambassadors in their communities.
The project is being implemented in 30 districts in the Northern, Upper East and Upper West regions in collaboration with Ghana Health Service (GHS) and Christian Aid, with funding support from the European Union.
Numerous interventions
The Upper West Programme Officer of SEND Ghana, Mr Adamu Mukaila, noted that maternal health issues in Ghana, especially in the three regions of northern Ghana, remained critical in spite of the numerous interventions by the government.
He said a number of pregnant women lost their lives in the course of exercising their inalienable rights of procreation, stressing that in view of this SEND Ghana selected influential people within the traditional or religious leadership or at the local level, who are willing to act as community champions to undertake further sensitisation programmes at the community level through peer-to-peer sensitisation in order to engender the needed impact at the wider grassroots level.
Partnership
He noted that SEND Ghana had in partnership with the GHS secured materials and resources such as leaflets and audio-visual documentaries on good maternal health policies and practices such as family planning, supervised deliveries, antenatal and post-natal services and safe motherhood.
He said the materials had been prepared in simplified language and would be distributed to the champions to guide them in their sensitisation programmes within their communities.
Mr Mukaila appealed to the media to use their platforms to develop effective ways of disseminating targeted advocacy messages to promote better citizens-government engagement on maternal health issues. — GNA
