Health workers trained in intellectual disability
Sixty health professionals in the Accra Metropolitan Health Directorate have been trained to handle persons with intellectual disabilities.
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The two-day workshop brought together nurses, doctors, technicians and psychiatrists to improve on ways of assisting persons with such conditions to be able to access healthcare in the region and beyond.
The programme, supported by STAR-Ghana, with funding from the Department for International Development (DFID), Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA), European Union (EU) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), is being implemented by Inclusion Ghana, a non-governmental organisation.
Societal problem
Addressing the participants, a clinical tutor at the School of Allied Health Sciences at the University of Ghana, Ms Nana Akua Owusu, said issues involving persons with disabilities were more of a societal challenge than being individual-based.
She explained that health professionals could not be blamed, partly because they were part of society and took such an attitude to their workplaces.
She, however, said she was hopeful that with the kind of education the health personnel had received, a change could happen within the shortest possible time.
The National Co-ordinator of Inclusion Ghana, Mr Auberon Jeleel Odoom, said the World Health Organisation estimated that between two and three per cent of the world’s population had intellectual disabilities.
According to him, there are approximately 750,000 people in Ghana living with the condition.
