Educate parents on healthy practices – Joyce Aryee

Dr Joyce Aryee, the National Ambassador for Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs), has advised parents to be educated on basic healthy practices to prevent their children from being exposed to infectious diseases.

She said infections such as worms and bilharzia could be avoided if a lot more public education was done and if the cycle of these transmissions were thought to parents in graphical forms.

She said the Parents Teachers Association (PTA), Churches, Mosques and the Media were appropriate avenues to use to educate parents to give their children a healthy life.

She made this statement when she visited some schools in the Eastern Region to observe the nationwide mass medication exercise for the children against intestinal worms and bilharzia.

The exercise, which begun from November 1 with the training of some teachers to serve as School-Based Health Coordinators in their various institutions, is expected to end by November 18 across the country.

Dr Aryee said educating parents on bilharzia would help them know the symptoms and the interventions to seek and not think otherwise when they see their children urinate blood.

She said she had observed that some children did not take part in the exercise because their parents prohibited them from doing so and that the exercise was to prevent any future complications caused from worm and bilharzia infestation, which may not have manifested.

She said it was better to prevent a disease than to wait for it to get out of hand, which would require spending more to cure.

Mr Christian Fiador, NTDs Focal Person for the Eastern Region said about 5000 schools within the Region would benefit from the exercise and data would be taken to analyse the impact of bilharzia amongst the school children.

He said students were given two main prescriptions, which were albendazol for worms and Praziquantel for Bilharzia or Schistosomiasis.

He said the medication would destroy all forms of intestinal worms and reduce egg life in bilharzia infected persons.

Schools visited included Nsukwaw M/A Basic School, Koforidua, Trinity Presbyterian Royal School, Adweso, Koforidua, and New Somanya Methodist Junior High School, Somanya.