Upper West Health Directorate presented with ICT equipment

Savana Signatures, an ICT for Development (ICT4D) Organisation, has presented ICT equipment to the Upper West Regional Health Directorate to help fight maternal and child health cases.

The equipment, included mobile phones, laptops, projectors and their screens, pointers and public address systems are meant to support nine health facilities located in districts with worse maternal and child health cases.

Mr John Steven Agbenyo, Executive Director of ICT4D said the objective was to help educate and raise awareness on good maternal and child health information among expectant mothers to keep them and their babies healthy.

He said the presentation of the equipment was an initiative under the Technology for Maternal and Child Health (T4MCH) project geared towards improving health outcomes for women and babies in 33 facilities in the Northern, Upper West and the Volta Regions.

Mr Agbenyo said the project sought to make maternal health information easily accessible to pregnant women, new mothers and their families.

He noted that the beneficiaries would receive weekly free text or voice messages on maternal and child health tips through their mobile phones according to their gestation periods.

He said already more than 160 health staff across the selected health facilities in the three regions had received training in the use of ICT tools such as the mobile messaging platform, creation of multi-media power point presentations, excel spreadsheets, file management and trouble shooting.

Dr Winfred Ofosu, Acting Regional Director of Health Services said the current direction of the Ghana Health Service (GHS) was to use ICT to leverage maternal health issues.

He expressed appreciation to Savana Signatures and partners for the support.

He said previously education of the public on maternal health issues had always been oral delivery of messages because of lack of facilities.

Dr Ofosu said the donation of the ICT equipment would ensure additional modes of information delivery to the public.

T4MCH is a five-year project that is being implemented by Savana Signatures in partnership with Salasan Consulting Inc. and Mustimuhw Solutions with funding from Global Affairs Canada.