CRS provides food storage facilities for eight communities in UWR

Funsi (U/W), May 7, GNA - The Catholic Relief Services (CRS) is to provide food storage facilities for eight communities in four districts of the Upper West Region at a cost of 400 million cedis to help reduce child malnutrition and mortality.

The facilities would also be used for safe child delivery, immunization and antenatal services for pregnant women as well as other integrated healthcare services to promote quality healthcare for children and their mothers.

Mr. Ali Mohammed, Programme Officer of CRS in charge of Health responsible for the region, said this at the Wa East District launch of the "Child Health Promotion Week" celebration at Funsi on Monday, which was on the theme: "Care for the new born - Start right". He said one of the key strategies that the CRS was working on in its 50 years of operations in the country had been child health promotion.

Mr. Mohammed said the CRS would therefore continue to collaborate with district assemblies, district health directorate and other partners to support the country to achieve the Millennium Development Goal four, which seeks to reduce under-five mortality rate by two thirds by 2015. Mr. Joe Bolibie, Wa East District Director of Health Service, said the Ghana Health Service (GHS) as part of its efforts to improve efficient service delivery, quality health care and coverage of children under-five years started the implementation of the Child Health Promotion Week.

He said the purpose of it was for service providers to use the week as one step opportunity for advocacy for existing child health services and providing key services and facts on preventive health care. Activities programmed for the week are immunization against the child hood killer diseases, Vitamin A supplementation, growth monitoring and distribution of child health record cards and re-treatment of bed nets.

Others are the use of iodated salt, birth and deaths registration and the education of caregivers and mothers on home management of fevers.

Mr. Bolibie called on CRS to continue to support maternal and child health development in the area as well as improve the health status of all people in the district.