School children as focal point for TB control

The Kick Tuberculosis Ghana programme is adopting the game of football to educate children on Tuberculosis (TB) to enable them to serve as change agents in their various communities.

Mr. Samuel Morkli Akoto, Western Regional Programme Manager told the Ghana News Agency that the move was to achieve 50 per cent increase in knowledge of the disease among rural communities.

The campaign would target children in basic and Junior High Schools between the ages of 10 and 15 years in prioritized districts such as the Tarkwa Municipality and the Sekondi-Takoradi Metropolitan Assembly for accelerated intervention and identification of TB hotspots.

Mr. Akoto said selected teachers in participating schools would be given adequate knowledge on TB and would be integrated into regular classroom work with football games on Fridays.

He said children continue to be innocent victims of the TB epidemic with no idea of the symptoms, and that, raising awareness about the disease was, therefore, paramount to saving many children from premature deaths, particularly, from HIV/TB children.

He said this year's "KICK TB Ghana" programme had selected some schools in the Tarkwa Municipality, as well as the Sekondi-Takoradi Metropolis to build the capacity of these children to fight the menace to help prevent the spread of the disease.