Fourth Annual Research Meeting opens

Accra, Nov. 23, GNA - A three-day annual research meeting for health programme managers, health partners and health researchers to share research outputs and seek solutions to health issues has opened in Accra.

It is being organized by the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research on the theme: "Bridging the Research-Policy Divide" for participants from Kenya, Cameroon, Cote D'Ivoire, The Gambia, Japan, USA and Ghana.

The UNICEF Country Representative in Ghana, Ms Dorothy Rozga said the fund had identified five priorities around which to build on the momentum generated by the UN Special Session on children and the ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The areas included girls' education, integrated early childhood development, immunization and micronutrient interventions, HIV/AIDS prevention and response and child protection.

Ms Rozga said UNICEF believed that achieving and sustaining results in all five of the priority areas would create dynamics for helping families and whole societies to break the cycle of poverty and impaired human development.

In a speech read for Mrs Mary Quaye, National Coordinator, Schools Health Education Programme (SHEP) of the Ghana Education Service, she said the Programme was established in 1993 as a reaction to the pledge made by the past government after attending two international conferences on children.

She said SHEP was the sum total of all health programmes/activities and projects that went into reducing morbidity and deformities among learners and creating safe and healthy school environment.

SHEP is aimed at making use of all available human and material resources to ensure improved health status of schools' population and to assist in improving enrolment, retention, academic performance and the need for every individual to live and practice healthy habits. She, therefore, called for strengthened collaboration especially among all stakeholders to work hard towards achieving the goals of the programme.