Health personnel interacts with religious bodies

Dededo (V/R), Oct. 12, GNA - Dr Andrews Arde-Acquah, the Volta Regional Director of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), on Sunday said continual interaction of health personnel with religious bodies that prevent their children from taking polio vaccines on the basis of faith could reduce their resistance over time.

He said the strategy was to complement the house-to-house visits by health officials to facilitate the polio immunisation exercise. Dr Arde-Acquah was speaking to Journalist when he led Mr Kwasi Owusu-Yeboa, the Regional Minster to Dededo, a settlement of largely members of the Apostles Revelations Society (ARS), to observe the immunisation exercise there.

The Minister advised parents to patronize the polio-immunisation programme adding "You don't lose anything if your child receives more than the recommended drops over time, but everything to lose if your child does not receive the minimum".

Mr Owusu-Yeboa, under the supervision of nurses immunised a number of children whose parents were members of the Church.

Mr Francis Abotsi, Health Education Officer at the GHS Volta Regional Secretariat, told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) that there was still strong resistance to the exercise at Kpale, in the Ho District, a stronghold of a the Church, which is averse to immunisation.

He said there had been instances of threats on the lives of health workers and volunteers involved in the immunisation in the recent past and as a result only children of interested parents took the polio vaccines.