Ghana Health Service launches Child Health Week

Pg 20. Thurs. May 1/08

Story: Rebecca Quaicoe Duho

THE Ghana Health Service (GHS) has launched this year’s Child Health Week with a call on parents, teachers and health professionals to ensure that children receive adequate complementary feeding to reduce child obesity and malnutrition.
According to health experts, malnutrition contributes to 50 per cent of all child deaths in developing countries while obesity in children leads to child diabetes and other non-communicable diseases.
The week, which would be celebrated from May 5 to 9, 2008, was launched in Accra on the theme: “Healthy eating, a key to child growth and development”, and is the fifth since the celebration was instituted in 2004.
The celebration, aimed at increasing public awareness on packages available for under-five children, brought together health professionals, government agencies, faith-based organisations and the media.
Some of the packages that would be provided would include; immunisation against childhood diseases, vitamin A supplementation, re-treatment of insecticide treated bed nets, provision of child health record cards, weighing of children aged zero to five and registration of children under one year.
The acting Director-General of the GHS, Dr Elias Sory, called for a mechanism where a collaborative inspectorate committee would be put in place to inspect feeding in schools especially private day care centres, to ensure that children were not overfed to develop obesity.
He also called for collaboration between parents and health professionals to ensure that children were given proper complementary foods to ensure healthy growth.
The Deputy Director in Charge of Public Health (Nutrition), Mr Jacob Armah, who gave a presentation on complementary feeding, called on parents or caregivers to ensure that such feeding started exactly when the child was six months, saying that a late start could result in the child not receiving the required nutrients.
He said such late starts also slowed children’s growth and development, as well as exposed them to deficiencies and malnutrition.
Dr Armah, however, said diarrhoea was high during complementary feeding stage, from six to 24 months of birth, adding that feeding bottles easily got contaminated and therefore called on nursing mothers to ensure that they avoided acts that could lead to such illnesses.