‘Community-based health education can boost maternal, child health’
The Chancellor of Moi University, Kenya, Professor Miriam K. Were, has called for the intensification of community-based health education as a positive step to tackle issues of maternal, infant and child mortalities.
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She said the engagement of community health workers and volunteers in such programmes was an effective way of providing information and education that would enhance maternal health at the pre-natal and post-natal stages.
“Healthcare cannot be improved by focusing solely on the provision of healthcare facilities. The facilities only help to cure diseases. But the provision of health care at the household level helps to improve the health of people,” she said.
International conference
Prof. Were made the statement when she delivered the keynote address at an international conference aimed at strengthening community healthcare for mothers and babies in Accra last Wednesday.
The conference, which was held under the auspices of the Japanese International Co-operation Agency (JIHAD), with collaboration from the Ghana Health Service (GHS) and other partner organisations, was on the theme “Strengthening Continuum of Care for Mothers and Babies.”
It brought together health experts from across Africa, international organisations such as United States Agency for International Development (USAID), United Nations International Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and some individual women.
EMBRACE Initiative
Participants discussed the Ghana Ensure Mothers and Babies Regular Access to Care (EMBRACE) Implementation Research, an initiative by JICA to engage women in selected districts on community-based approach to improving maternal and child health.
The EMBRACE research project was started by JICA at Kintampo, Dodowa and Navrongo in 2012 to create a more feasible and sustainable intervention package to improve on maternal and child health.
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Prof. Were said results of the engagement of 46 per cent of the targeted 11,100 women in the selected communities from October 2014 to December 2015 indicated that there was much improvement in the health of the beneficiary mothers and the babies.
Challenges
The World Health Organisation (WHO) Resident representative in Ghana, Dr Owen Kaluwa, said even though the Global Strategy for Women and Children’s Health (GSWCH) indicated that progress had been made from 2010 to 2015, Africa still had a lot to do.
He identified shortage of human resource, poor health facilities, local beliefs and misconceptions, ineffective referral systems and poor targeting of intervention programmes as the accountable factors for the low progress in improving maternal and child health.
“I will, therefore, pledge the support of WHO in ensuring that the EMBRACE is firmly rooted in the country to improve upon the health of women and children,” he said.