The Christian Children’s Fund of Canada (CCFC), a child-centred international development organisation, on Tuesday, donated drugs to the Ghana Health Service (GHS) for distribution in the Northern and Upper East Regions.
The 174 boxes of drugs consist of one million chewable tablets of albendazole (400mg), two million capsules of vitamin A and 2.5 million multivitamin coated tablets to be administered to health facilities in the two regions to cater for children and pregnant women.
CCFC supports children, families and communities in developing countries, hence; the donation was to complement the government’s efforts at promoting maternal health, reducing under-five mortality and also, improving the achievement of learning outcomes among school children in the country.
Mrs Gifty Akosua Baka, CCFC Ghana Country Director, who presented the drugs in Accra said the organization had for the past eight years consistently responded to the health needs of children through donations of de-wormers and vitamins to children and pregnant mothers in the Northern Region, and for the past two years extended this support to the Upper East Region.
She said the organization was committed to its mission of creating a future of hope for all children such that they could grow to develop the skills and resources to overcome poverty and pursue justice.
She noted that this goal could only be achieved in Ghana when the children were born healthy, supported by healthy parents, who lived in a healthy environment.
The Country Director said many factors underlined the health and safety of children in the country; paramount among them being parasitic worm infection and vitamin deficiency, which were highly prevalent in deprived rural communities.
She said studies showed that in Ghana, two-thirds of children below 15 years were at the risk of intestinal worm infections such as ring worm, whip worm, round worm and hook worm, resulting from contaminated food, unsafe drinking water, insanitary conditions and poor hygiene practices.
She said worm infection and lack of vitamins retarded growth and their learning abilities of school-age children and was of much concern to CCFC, because, the ages of zero to 15 was the foundation stage of child education and basis for future development.
“Intestinal worm infection in humans is a silent epidemic that destroys the health, wellbeing and learning potentials of millions of children in many developing countries,” Mrs Baka said, quoting the International Journal of Environmental Health Research, Volume 13 (June 2013).
“It is time to take collective action to deal with the calamity among our children to ensure that they grow up healthy both physically and mentally.”
She advised parents, teachers and health workers to intensify the teaching of regular hand washing to children and also to seek early treatment for worm infestation among children.
“It is our duty as adults to ensure our environment is clean and we must teach our children to do same,” she said.
“Open defecation must be stopped and parents must ensure that household toilet facilities are available to prevent children defecating in the open environment.”
She urged the government to continue the promotion of the School Health Education Programme to the letter through mass children’s deworming programme, provision of safe drinking water and toilet facilities in schools to promote child health in schools.
Mrs Baka appealed to the government to reduce the bureaucracies involved in issuance of tax exemption certificates to development partners such as CCFC to facilitate the clearing of imported gifts in kind from the ports since this had proved cumbersome over the years.
Receiving the items, Dr Gloria Quansah Asare, GHS Deputy Director-General, expressed her gratitude to CCFC for the kind gesture and urged other development partners to do same.
She gave the assurance that the drugs would be delivered to the two regions for subsequent administering to children and pregnant mothers.
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