Volta Premier Fm
Improving immunization coverage is vital to promoting child health and reducing childhood diseases and deaths.
Despite several public health interventions for national development, immunization coverage in the Ketu North Municipality has over the past three years consistently declined, hence, an immediate and swift remedial action is needed to reverse the trend.
It is against this background that Global Action for Women Empowerment (GLOWA) and Ketu North Municipal Health Directorate under the Pfizer Immunization Support Project organized a day training workshop for opinion leaders, community health nurses and community volunteers in the Ketu North Municipality.
Held at the old municipal assembly hall, the workshop among others was to identify major factors that influence attendance to immunization sessions, sensitize volunteers and opinion leaders on the importance of immunization as wells develop strategies to help improve upon the immunization coverage in the municipality.
Global Action for Women Empowerment (GLOWA) and the Ketu North Municipal Health Directorate, under the Pfizer Immunization Support Project, has organized a day training workshop for opinion leaders, community health nurses and community volunteers in the Ketu North Municipality.
The workshop, among other things, was to identify major factors that influence attendance to immunization sessions, sensitize volunteers and opinion leaders on the importance of immunization as wells develop strategies to help improve upon the immunization coverage in the municipality.
Speaking on the sideline of the immunization workshop, Chief Executive Officer of GLOWA, Nana Bakateyi II, said their collaboration with the Ketu North Municipal Health Directorate is meant to scale up the immunization of children to ensure that they are healthy in order to reduce child mortality rate in the municipality. She also underscored the important role of the traditional authorities and community volunteers in expanding the immunization coverage in the Municipality. She is, however, hopeful the Health Directorate will achieve a hundred per cent target this year.
Nana Bakateyi II also urged all parents and caregivers to prioritize the immunization of their children since it builds their immune system in order to fight against diseases.
On his part, the Dzodze Municipal Disease Control Officer, Christopher Kankpetin, said the Expanded Program Immunization is a laudable initiative as it will help increase coverage of immunization for eligible children and also reduce the incidence of immunizable diseases among children below age five.
Mr. Kankpetin, who also touched on the status of EPI performance in the municipality, said their target for 2017 was 90% but they were able to achieve only 69.5%, a record he described as unsatisfactory. He therefore called on the health workers and the volunteers to up their games so they can improve upon their previous performance in order to be among the first five districts in the Volta Region.
Mr. Christopher Kankpetin also bemoaned factors such as poor timing of outreaches, fear of waste of vaccines, attitude and practices of health workers, lack of register for tracing defaulters and transportation as challenges accounting for low immunization coverage in the Dzodze Municipality.
Some traditional leaders and community volunteers who spoke to Global Fm expressed their readiness to work hand-in-hand with the Municipal Health Directorate in order to improve upon the immunization coverage in the area.
Source: Global FM
