NO MATERNAL DEATH IN ASSIN SOUTH FOR 2 YEARS (PAGE 22, FEB 13, 2010)

THE Assin South District has not recorded any maternal death for two consecutive years. No infant death was also reported in any of its health facilities.
The District Director of Health Services, Mr Mends Kofi Quaning, made this known at the 2009 annual health performance review meeting at Nyankumasi Ahenkro on Thursday.
Mr Quaning said despite the fact that the district did not have a hospital, the health centres were performing well in their diagnosis.
Mr Quaning said the district had only three functional Community-Based Health Planning Services (CHPS) compounds and had demarcated 11 to be operational by 2015, adding that two of them were targeted to be operational by June, 2010 at Abodweseso and Assin Kumasi.
He said they would require four medical assistants, six midwives, three staff nurses, 13 community health nurses and 20 other allied health professionals to meet the full complement of staff.
Mr Quaning said lack of a district hospital was one of the major challenges facing that district in terms of some diagnosis.
He said out of the 10 cases reported at the facilities, malaria continued to be the leading cause of diseases.
The district reported a total of 32,481 malarial cases, representing 60 per cent of the Outpatient Department diseases in 2009, an increase of 12.3 per cent from 28,925 in 2008.
He said in line with the Millennium Development Goals on maternal and child health, the district recorded an unprecedented coverage in childhood immunisation service of 89.6 per cent against the childhood killer diseases.
Mr Quaning said the district collaborated with some of the junior doctors from the University Medical School for both clinical and community health programmes.
He said with the help of Global Fund and efforts of tuberculosis care providers, treatment continued to record improvement with a success rate of 91 per cent in 2009 from 58 per cent in 2008.
Mr Quaning stated that HIV/AIDS among pregnant women decreased marginally from 15 per cent in 2008 to 13 per cent in 2009.
He appealed to the government to build a hospital for the district to improve health delivery services for the people.
In his welcoming address, the Medical Assistant in charge of the Nyankumasi Sub-District, Mr Isaac Fosu Mumford, urged the staff to use the review to take measures to improve upon their performance.
The District Co-ordinating Director, Mr Thaddeus Zaason, who stood in for the District Chief Executive, Mrs Sabina Appiah-Kubi, said the assembly would ensure that the requisite facilities were put in place to enhance health delivery services in the district until a hospital was built for the district.
He urged the staff to continue to work hard to surmount the challenges facing health delivery services in the area.

CATHOLIC HEALTH SERVICE BUILDS HEALTH FACILITY (PAGE 29, FEB 3, 2010)

A $500,000.00 obstetric fistula and maternity unit built by the Cape Coast Archdiocese of the Catholic Health Service at Mankessim in the Mfantseman Municipality has been inaugurated.
Dubbed “The Mercy Women’s Centre”, the construction of the 60-bed capacity facility is to enhance accessibility to antenatal and postnatal problems to improve healthcare delivery in the area.
It is estimated that almost 600,000 women die annually as a result of lack of effective care during pregnancy and childbirth.
For every death, 30 more women suffer long-term damage to their health from obstetric fistula and that often affect mostly young mothers aged between 14 and 20 years as a consequence of neglect leading to obstructed labour and commonly also from cultural practices such as female circumcision.
Obstetric fistula is a severeA medical condition in which a fistula (hole) develops either between the rectum and vagina (recto-vaginal fistula) or between the bladder and vagina (vesico-vaginal fistula) after complications resulting from childbirth.
This occurs when adequate medical care is not available for the woman during labour or due to other factors such as laceration, rape and other sexual trauma.
Women who develop any of these conditions pass urine or stool or both through the vagina, thereby putting them in a bad condition, which consequently affects their social, psychological and physical life.
Currently, fistula patients in Ghana compete for the space and time of health workers with other patients in the three major hospitals in the country, which are the Tamale, Komfo Anokye and Korle-Bu teaching hospitals. The first fistula centre was inaugurated in Tamale in July last year.
Obstetric fistula patients suffer pain, humiliation and life-long physical weakness if they do not receive medical care. There are an estimated two million women living with this condition mostly in sub-Saharan Africa and in Ghana it is estimated that fistula occurs at a rate of about one to two of all deliveries.
The concern among healthcare providers about the rate of maternal mortality and the number of women with obstetric fistula and the lack of facilities necessary to cater for such people, prompted the Catholic Archdiocese of Cape Coast to establish the centre.
Speaking at the inauguration last Friday, the Apostolic Administrator, Most Reverend Matthias Kobina Nketsiah, said the centre was established in fulfilment of God’s command to mankind to show love and compassion to one another.
Bishop Nketsiah commended His Eminence Peter Cardinal Appiah Turkson, for being instrumental in the establishment of the centre and said it demonstrated his interest in health delivery services in the country.
He also commended the Sisters of Mercy of the United States of America and the Ghana Ireland Friendship Trust which provided funding and support for the project.
The acting Regional Director of Health Service, Dr S.T. Kwashie, asked management to ensure discipline by being firm and decisive.
He called on other churches to emulate the example of the Catholic Church by providing health facilities in the country.
A consultant and Chairman of the management board, Dr John B. Wilson, said the centre had a hostel to rehabilitate patients treated at the obstetric fistula unit to enable them to be reintegrated into society.
The Central Regional Minister, Mrs Ama Benyiwa-Doe, said the Regional Co-ordinating Council would collaborate with the Mfantseman Municipal Assembly to ensure the smooth and effective functioning of the centre.
The Omanhen of the Mankessim Traditional Area, Osagyefo Amanfo Edu VI, who chaired the function, advised the management to ensure the maintenance of the facility for patients to derive maximum benefits from it.

AMOAH-TETTEH ASSISTS TWIFO PRASO SCHOOL (PAGE 11, FEB 3, 2010)

A DEPUTY Minister in charge of Secondary Education, Mrs Elizabeth Amoah-Tetteh, has presented 100 bags of cement and five packets of roofing sheets to Twifo Praso Senior High School for the construction of additional classrooms to enable the school to cope with the four-year senior high school programme.
Mrs Amoah-Tetteh, who is also the Member of Parliament for Twifo Atti Mokwaa, said the government would continue to provide infrastructure for the four-year programme even though it had decided to reverse to the three-year period.
The Deputy Minister, however, said this would depend on availability of funds, and that proceeds from the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund) would also be used to support infrastructural development.
She said the government had tasked the district assemblies to collate information on infrastructure in senior high schools to enable it to take the necessary steps to deal with the problem in order not to jeopardise the four-year programme.
Mrs Amoah-Tetteh gave an assurance that the government was committed to solving infrastructural problems, saying that it had already held discussions to that effect.
She said she had so far donated 1,400 bags of cement and 80 packets of roofing sheets from the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Funds to support community development projects in the Twifo-Hemang-Lower Denkyira District.
The Headmaster of the Twifo Praso Senior High School, Mr Kojo Hayford, commended Mrs Amoah-Tetteh for the donation and said it would go a long way to alleviate the plight of the students.

ASSEMBLY MEMBER REGISTERS 500 UNDER NHIS (PAGE 20, JAN 15 2010)

Five hundred residents within the Esikafo Ammbantem-Antem Electoral Area in Cape Coast have benefited from a free registration exercise under the National Health Insurance Scheme.
Their registration was sponsored by the assembly member, Nana Kweku Awuku, who is also the Presiding Member of the Cape Coast Metropolitan Assembly.
The figure included residents whose cards had expired and took advantage of the opportunity to renew them.
According to Nana Awuku, the package was his Christmas and New Year gift for the residents.
Nana Awuku said he decided to register the residents free of charge, in appreciation of their support and co-operation for the past seven years that he had represented them as their assembly member.
He said he had succeeded in his work as an assembly member because of the maximum co-operation and full support he enjoyed from the residents.
He said during the seven years, he had been able to initiate a number of development projects to improve conditions within the community.
These include a sanitary facility and a six- classroom block at Antem, streetlights at Esikafo Ammbantem and improvement in the drainage system within the two communities.
He commended the residents for their continuous support and expressed the hope that they would continue to do so for the development of the area.