Upper West records high mortality & fertility rates

Wa, Nov. 1 GNA - The Upper West Region records 208 deaths out of every 1,000 births due to high incidence of childhood diseases, Mr. Sahanun Mogtari, Upper West Regional Minister has said.

He said the Region also has the highest fertility rate of 5.5 percent higher than the national average, which is 4.4 percent fertility rate.

Mr. Mogtari announced this at Wa during a two-day review workshop on the development of the Upper West Region. He attributed the high fertility rate to the high mortality rate of children, which compelled parents to give birth to so many children for fear of losing some to the diseases.

"All these factors do not only retard our development progress, but also increases the illiteracy, diseases and ignorance rate as much attention is diverted on to mortality and fertility issues".

The Regional Minister urged all citizens of the Region to lend their support to the developmental needs of the people so as to eradicate disease and illiteracy which have been the major factors militating against development.

Mr. James Dassah, Head of the Regional Economic Planning said the workshop was to offer opportunity for District Assemblies to showcase their development agenda and outline constraints they were facing in their bid to develop their areas.

He said it was also meant to allow the people to know how their various District Assemblies were performing and find out where they could offer their services for development.

Mr. Dassah said, although they had enough infrastructure in education, health and other sectors, lack of qualified staff to man such facilities were major problems and gave the assurance that plans were far advanced to address those pertinent issues.

The workshop attracted over 100 participants drawn from government decentralized departments, non-governmental organisations and other development partners in the Region.