The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is supporting the Ghana Health Service to implement Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) interventions in three Municipalities in the Ashanti Region.
Selected communities and schools in Asokore Mampong, Kwadaso, and Kumasi Metro are to benefit from the interventions aimed at scaling up good hygiene and sanitation practices as a strategy to promote good health.
As part of the interventions, facilitators would engage communities to develop community action plans that would guide beneficiary communities to sustain good hygienic practices as a people.
The expectation is that the interventions would prevent WASH-related diseases such as diarrhea and malaria in schools and communities and significantly contribute to improved health outcomes.
In line with this, the Regional Health Directorate has held an inception meeting with stakeholders at the school and community levels to discuss their roles in the implementation of the interventions.
The three-day meeting was attended by Municipal School Health Education Programme (SHEP) Coordinators, Health Promotion Officers, Community Health Nurses, School-Based Health Coordinators, and Environmental Health Workers at the local level.
They were taken through community engagement skills, developing key messages, understanding the audience, public communication among others.
Madam Charity Nikoi, a Communication Specialist with UNICEF, said the intervention sought to enhance the knowledge and understanding of school health education programmes with emphasis on WASH.
She was hopeful that the competence of the participants of the inception meeting to conduct downstream training for school-level stakeholders would improve.
She entreated them to aid the stakeholders at the local level to draw their community action plans to promote WASH activities among the beneficiary communities even after the end of the intervention.
Dr. Michael Rockson Adjei, the Deputy Ashanti Director of Health Services in charge of Public Health (DDPH), reminded the participants that the fight against the covid-19 pandemic was still not over.
He, therefore, entreated them to ensure compliance with the COVID-19 preventive protocols in all their community engagements.
As stakeholders in health, they must set good examples at all times for others to look up to them to observe the safety protocols.
