The Mother-Baby Friendly Health Facility Initiative (MBHFI) is the ninth of 14 strategies being implemented by the Ghana Health Service under its National Newborn strategy and action plan, with support from UNICEF through the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation.

The project, which aims at ending all preventable maternal and newborn deaths towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030,  was piloted in four selected districts of the region namely Bolgatanga municipal, Bawku municipal, Bongo and Kassena-Nankana West districts.

According to Dr Priscilla Wobil, the program has brought significant improvement in the quality of health care and rendered mothers and their babies with a reduction in stillbirths and neonatal mortality.

Speaking in an interview with Citi News, at the first quarter review meeting held in Bolgatanga, Dr.Wobil  attributed the commitment of health personnel and their leaders at the districts and regional for the success chalked.

“From October to December, they [health personnel] worked on improving counseling, to ensure that every mother who comes to the facility to deliver will be counseled on breast feeding,  family planning, new born and maternal danger signs so that if there is any problem, they can come to the facility immediately for redress”.

She impressed on health personnel in the region to work hard at ensuring the region attains the objectives of the programme.

The National Director of family health department of the Ghana health service, Dr. Patrick Kuma Aboagye said even though Ghana received an award as the best maternal mortality improved country in Africa, there was the need to still improve the quality of health care at facilities.

He added that, the establishment of nutrition clinics, increase in data collection and distribution of iron foliage to menstruating women (aged 10 to 19) were among others strategies of addressing maternal and neonatal dangers.

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By: Frederick Awuni/citifmonline.com/Ghana

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Dr. Yaw Ofori Yeboah, Deputy Director, Public Health, at the Volta Regional Health Directorate, said the MenAfricVac-1 would be the 13^th vaccine to be made available to children throughout the country to protect them against a specific subgroup of meningitis – the Sero-group A.

Dr Ofori Yeboah at a press briefing in Ho on the introduction of the vaccine into the routine immunisation nationwide, said the Sero-group A was a major cause of meningitis, which had killed over a 1,000 people in Ghana.

He said the vaccine was safe and had been tested in the three northern regions of the country, and gave the assurance that systems were in place within the Health Service to manage issues during the immunization.

He expressed concerns about increasing number of women, especially the rural folk, delivering outside health facilities, and called for intensified education for all expectant mothers to deliver at health facilities and have their children immunised.

Mr. Godwin Afegle, Co-ordinator, Expanded Programme on Immunisation (EPI), said starting from 1^st November, this year, infants would receive a single dose EPI immunisation intra-muscularly on the upper right arm.

In 2012, Ghana was among the first meningitis belt countries in Africa to introduce MenAfricVac with a mass vaccination campaign targeting 3 million people in the three high-risk northern regions with very positive results.

This has led to the introduction of the vaccine in accordance with a World Health Organisation (WHO) directive to be included in the routine childhood immunisation programme within one to five years.

The vaccine was developed in 2001 between WHO and the Programme for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH) with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

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Source: GNA

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