Red Cross volunteers in U/E trained for meningitis vaccination

The Swiss Red Cross in partnership with the Ghana Red Cross Society have trained 300 Red Cross volunteers in the Upper East Region to complement the efforts of the Ghana Health Service to roll out the Preventive Strategy of combating Cerebro Spinal Meningitis (CSM) in the region.

This came out at a one-day training workshop facilitated by the Disease Control officers and Officers of the Ghana Red Cross in all the nine districts of the region.

Speaking at the training workshop, the Upper East Regional Manager of the Ghana Red Cross Society, Mr. Joseph Abarike, said the move was to support the ongoing CSM vaccination campaign in the region.

He said the trained volunteers are providing sensitization and social mobilization services on the vaccination campaign and supporting the vaccination on crowd control.

It would be recalled that in February this year, an outbreak of CSM was declared in the region which recorded 37 deaths.

During this period the Ghana Health Service and the trained Red Cross Volunteers mobilized people for the vaccination campaign and also undertook health education activities in the region.

As part of the approach of promoting preventive strategies of the World Health Organization(WHO), the Ministry of Health in collaboration with WHO and UNICEF secured the Meningococcal A Meningitis vaccine and are organizing vaccination campaign against the disease.

The district directors of the Ghana Health Service expressed delight about the support and said the role being played by volunteers would help achieve the 95 per cent target across the region.