ISODEC extends sexual education to deprived communities
The Integrated Social Development Centre (ISODEC) has expressed worry about the low level of knowledge on sexual reproductive health issues among many youths in the country and advised the Ghana Health Service (GHS) to extend more sensitization campaigns to rural communities.
Madam Agnes Gandaa, Northern Ghana Programmes Coordinator of ISODEC, stressed the need for the Ghana Health Service to incorporate sexual health reproduction education and sensitization in their outreach programmes to curtail the numerous teenage pregnancies in the country.
Mad Gandaa, who spoke in Tamale on Tuesday during a one-day stakeholders’ meeting with the Ghana Health Service, appealed to the GHS to post more staff to deprived communities to educate the people on reproductive health issues to reverse the trend.
She said her outfit had noticed that a lot of youths in many deprived communities in the Northern Region, Upper East and Upper West regions lacked adequate knowledge on sexual reproductive health issues, hence ISODEC intervention in four districts where they intend to deepen awareness.
Mr Leonard Baatiema, Project Officer of ISODEC in the Northern Region, said ISODEC and its partners had been implementing the Family Reproductive Health Rights Project in hard to reach communities in the three northern regions since 1997.
He said the project sought to improve the sexual and reproductive health rights and needs of disadvantaged groups, particularly young people and poor women of reproductive age.
Mr Baatiema said these efforts resulted in monumental improvement in access to reproductive health services and increased demand for services by the marginalised and disadvantaged groups.
Mr Abukari Yakubu, the Northern Regional Director of Human Resource of the Ghana Health Service, expressed worry about the lack of staff in key critical areas of healthcare delivery in the Region and called for adequate staff to be posted to such deprived communities.
He said many more people continued to refuse postings to some districts thereby making such areas lack the needed services.
Mr Yakubu said the policy of the Ghana Health Service was to post 90 per cent of nurses and other staff who were trained in any region as a means of retaining enough nurses across the country, stressing that the Northern Region has a total of 2,048 nurses of all categories.
He said the Region had shown dramatic improvement within the past decade in the area of reduction in child mortality; improvement in maternal health as well as combating HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and other diseases though saddled with constraints and challenges.
Dr. Nang-beifubah mentioned bad cultural beliefs and practices, bad road network, lack of equipment and logistics that could facilitate optimum nursing care, lack of functional communication directories at health facilities and lack of doctors and midwives as some of the factors that affected service delivery in the Region.
Hajia Catherine Deri, the Regional Chairperson of the Ghana Registered Nurses Association (GRNA), said activities to mark the day include radio talk shows, health checks at market places and communities, health education in schools and health walk among others.
Source: GNA