World Vision Ghana (WVG), has out-doored community groups in the Kassena-Nankana West District to improve the feeding practices among women of reproductive age including pregnant and lactating women and children under two years.
Lack of best feeding practices among pregnant women, lactating mothers, and children under the age of 2 contributes to malnutrition, stunting, obesity, and anemia, and other diseases.
But the World Vision Ghana initiative under a project known as ‘improved feeding practices for the first 1, 000 days’ will help to improve the feeding practices of 5, 520 women of reproductive age, pregnant and lactating mothers and again support 4, 900 children under two years in all the three project districts.
These districts include the Kassena Nankana West (Upper East Region), Kintampo South (Bono East), and Sekyere East (Ashanti Region).
Cluster Programs Manager, WVG, Robert Pwazaga said the project will help to reduce poverty at the community level through the formation of groups such as the Village Based Entrepreneurs.
“Approximately 4,800 households or 24, 000 household members in 70 communities would benefit from the project. The project will be improving household nutrition using the social enterprise approach as a key model for the sale of nutritional supplements by Village Based Entrepreneurs (VBEs). This model will help to also increase income and provide employment for households”, Mr. Pwazaga announced.
This came to light during a well-attended ceremony in Sirigu, a community in the Kassena-Nankana West District of the Upper Region to outdoor the community groups.
Mr. Pwazaga indicated that the project since its inception in the Kassena-Nankana West Area program in 2020 has worked with the community members which has resulted in the formation and training of community-level groups which include, Community Health Volunteers, Mother to Mother Support groups, Village Based Entrepreneurs, Male Champions, and Farmer Groups in Sirigu, Mirigu, and Kandiga area councils which are the project focus areas.
WVG, a Christian humanitarian, advocacy, and development organization during the outdooring of the above groups, supported the mobility of the Community Health Volunteers, the Male Champions, and student peer educators by donating 100 bicycles to them.
In addition, 4 sets of hemoCues and 10 boxes of micro cuvette were presented to the district health directorate “to support the monitoring of anemia status of pregnant women and children under 5 years in the project communities”.
The Cluster Manager announced plans to also donate anthropometric tools such as weighing scales, weighing pans, and infantometers to the KNWD directorate to support quality health care delivery.
The 4-year project is funded by the Japan Social Development Fund through the World Bank with support from World Vision Japan.
Ambrose Mwimpuo, the Project Coordinator, explained that the duties of the Community Health Volunteers involve moving to hard-to-reach communities and ensuring that all targeted children are monitored.
“The Male Champions too are to encourage men to support their wives by accompanying their wives to the hospital so that it becomes a collective responsibility of both parents to ensure that the child is well taken off.”
Due to the poverty level in the Upper East Region, many pregnant women do not get to eat iron-based foods as well as plant and animal-based protein. This has always been a contributory factor to anemia cases among pregnant women.
The Kassena-Nankana West District Health Director, Hypolite Yeledour said one of the surest ways to prevent maternal deaths is through early detection. He described the hemoCues provided to the district health directorate as timely to avert maternal deaths.
“The district recorded one maternal death last year but with the support of health workers, we have not recorded any maternal death from the beginning of the year to now. Anemia among pregnant women in the district is very high. Last year we recorded 46 percent. And for us to be able to tackle maternal deaths, we need to identify the anemia in pregnancy very early. So the HB machines we have received from World Vision Ghana has come at the right time to help us address maternal and prenatal deaths in the district”, Mr. Yeledour stated.
The Kassena-Nankana West District Chief Executive, Gerald Ataogye in a speech read on his behalf thanked World Vision Ghana for their support to improve the lives of the people in the district.
Source: A1Radioonline.com|101.1Mhz|Joshua Asaah|Ghana
