GHANA: BOLGA LOOKS SET TO WAR AGAINST POOR SANITATION

GHANA: BOLGA LOOKS SET TO WAR AGAINST POOR SANITATION

Edward Adeti's Report, Upper East, Ghana

Mr. Edward Ayagle

The new boss of the Bolgatanga Municipal Assembly, Mr. Edward Ayiriba Ayagle, looks set to dare what his predecessors "feared" to do— a crackdown on landlords who put up houses without toilets.

The assembly under successive governments has always avoided hoofing it whenever the media want to engage it on the slippery ground of bending landlords to build toilets as its byelaws demand for the obvious reason that doing so could antagonise the people against the government of the day and further result in the party in power losing some votes. But Mr. Ayagle, in a press briefing in Bolgatanga, says he does not fear what his forebears feared because “sanitation-related diseases are claiming more votes than the necessary enforcement itself.”

Lack of private toilet facilities and failure to enforce the sanitation byelaws in Bolgatanga have continued to encourage thousands of people to defecate openly amid fears that disease outbreaks could grab the municipality by surprise anytime soon. About 9 out of 10 landlords in Bolgatanga who charge as much as an average of 25 Ghana cedis for one-month rent of a single room do not see the need to put up a decent toilet facility for themselves and their tenants, most of whom are worried and fear to welcome long-staying visitors in their homes.

Bolgatanga was adjudged the neatest town in the country in September, 2003, by the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development when Mr. Rockson Ayine Bukari was in charge as the Municipal Chief Executive (MCE), but residents have continued to compete for space with growing filth about eight years down the lane. In his day, anyone caught in any act of pollution was towed to the sanitation court and slapped with appropriate fines. A 35-member sanitation task force was once in place to ensure that the existing sanitation byelaws were obeyed, gutters cleared up and public toilets kept clean.

Besides, the assembly once built more public toilets and stretched helping hands to landlords who came forward with requests for toilets in their houses; but, however, practically has not succeeded in pursuing its sanitation vision to the point where it should have become difficult today for any house to exist without an accompanying serviceable toilet of its own in the municipality. Rockson Bukari is probably so far the only MCE who came close to doing that.

The new MCE, touching on developmental projects in the municipality, told newsmen during the briefing that his administration since its beginning in May, this year, had seen the completion of six projects including a water closet toilet facility, school blocks and health facilities which had been handed over to the beneficiary agencies and communities. Nyariga and Soe-Yipala each now has a 3-unit classroom block with office, toilet and stores. The Baptist Junior High School in the Zongo community has also been provided with the same facility. Mr. Ayagle expressed the hope that the new development would encourage enrollment and ease the pains of pupils who travel miles to attend school outside their own communities.

Two Community-based Health Planning Services (CHPS) compounds, the MCE said, have been handed over to the Ghana Health Service (GHS) at Katanga and Yarigabisi. He promised that the facilities, which were completed at the costs of Gh¢78,450.00 and Gh¢78, 670.00 respectively, would receive further furnishing from the assembly to make them work effectively enough to reduce maternal mortality and infant morbidity as well as pressure at the Regional Hospital.

“One other project that cannot escape mention is a Gh¢54,193.97 10-seater water closet facility for the Atulbabisi Electoral Area which, as I speak, is in use and I believe strongly that this facility will help improve sanitary conditions in the said area as no person will have a reason to defecate in the open,” the MCE stated, adding “My resolve is to do everything possible to keep the Municipality clean at all times.”

He disclosed that he had ordered the clearing of garbage which had almost swallowed up the Bolgatanga Experimental School and had also held bilateral talks with the regional executives of the Ghana Private Roads and Transport Union (GPRTU) on sanitation particularly at the main lorry station which, according to him, has remained a sanitation reference point for visitors since it is their first and last point of call when entering and leaving the municipality. He promised to work closely with the media and urged the assembly’s Health and Sanitation Unit to intensify its efforts on sustaining clean-up programmes.

The MCE added that the massive support that greeted President Mills’s bid at the Sunyani Congress was a victory forecast ahead of 2012 for the President to make good in his “Better Ghana Agenda” implementation till 2016.

GHANA: DUBILA STILL DRINKS “ANYTHING” TO SURVIVE

DUBILA STILL DRINKS “ANYTHING” TO SURVIVE

Edward Adeti’s Report, Ghana.

Residents of Dubila dig deep into the earth for elusive brown water

Two years after the Daily Dispatch brought to the fore the acute shortage of drinkable water at Dubila, a remote rural village inside Bolgatanga, there has been a level of change but some parts of the area still drink “anything” to survive.

A whole community had been thirsty years before and after Independence until this paper by its publication on Tuesday June 30, 2009, got involved. Consequently, one borehole popped up in three of the six zones that constitute the village which hitherto had been looking up to erratic rainfall, passing rivers and a lonely dam in its centre for water to meet domestic and commercial purposes.

Whilst the three zones, namely Dubila-Nayirekura ( or Dubila Central), Dubila-Kolibolgo and Dubila-Ayessikabisi, now form endless queues behind a few boreholes they can call their own, the rest still travel several kilometres back and forth on foot, and are too tired to do anything else except to sleep when they finally return in tired bodies.

School-going children in Dubila-Nayirepaala, Dubila-Yakene and Dubila-Anayelebisi (the areas without boreholes) are the worst-disturbed as they sometimes are forced to forgo their sleep for a pre-dawn journey for water amid fears into the unknown. By the time they are returning after sunrise, wet and waddling under heavy containers, the first two lessons are long over at school. There is not a single school in the community. Basic school children walk daily beyond the perimeters of the village to attend school. 

Animals and humans compete over a receding dam

As the prevailing climate change continues to hold back sufficient rainfall and the rivers with the central dam at Dubila recede and surrender their water to global warming, the women and children of the area join dry-throated cattle in an endless contest for the scarce little water. Every family has a steel container with which they dig deep into the wet sand of the riverbed for water whenever the two rivers, Ayaboka (at Dubila-Nayire) and Ayomii (at Dubila-Yakene), go dry. In time of complete dryness, the inhabitants travel out of the community to the neighbouring Bongo Beo and Dachio. 

In an exclusive interview with the Daily Dispatch, Mr. Wisdom Awisika Atuah, an opinion leader in the area and founder of the Wine-Panga Cultural Foundation ( a talent-hunting community-based organisation), said the water-deprived population had continued to suffer the scourge of such water-borne diseases as river blindness, bilharzias and cholera among others.

Mrs. Avoorima Azanlebisa, a farmer and peasant trader at Dubila-Nayire, lamented the adverse effects of water scarcity on domestic and commercial activities in the village. “A number of our children had ever set forth at dawn in search of water and never returned. We’ve have lost some children, and some have been maimed, due to water-borne diseases. And there are many who, out of pressure to satisfy the scarcity, have given up their commercial farming activities for some other businesses because there is not constant water supply for an all-year-round farming. 

"Some children have also dropped out of school after the indispensable and endless search for water has rendered them perpetual latecomers, absentees and poor-performing students. There is no school here. The schools they attend are miles away from this community and there is no light under which they can study or do their home work when they come back from school. No affordable access to electronic information and education for our children, yet they must compete with their contemporaries in the towns and cities in everything including external examinations like the BECE and job interviews,” she said.

Another resident, Mrs. Victoria Apoore who is into local shea-butter processing at Dubila-Yakene, used the interview opportunity to appeal for vehicle-friendly roads, a basic school, a clinic and electricity.

Transportation pressure is unbearable particularly on market days in Bolgatanga. Market women and men are torn in-between queuing for water and enduring the marathon to Bongo-Beo and Dachio to catch any available means of transport to the Bolgatanga market with their crops, animals, locally woven baskets and smocks. How they will return home at sunset hangs on a stroke of luck.

The only school structure in the area, which is yet to function probably under the name “Dubila Primary School”, has got only three classrooms. Since twenty electric poles were offloaded in the area in the year 2000 to connect the community to the national grid, it was only six months ago that about ten of the poles were planted upright. Residents are worried because the erection of the ten poles has been the only development so far since the resurrection of the project in January, this year.

HEALTH:MALARIA CLAIMS 41.7% OF CHILDREN BEFORE THEIR 5TH BIRTHDAY

MALARIA CLAIMS 41.7% OF CHILDREN BEFORE THEIR 5TH BIRTHDAY

Edward Adeti’s Report, Upper East, Ghana

 41.7% of children who die in the Upper East Region before their 5th birthday are claimed by malaria, the Regional Director of Health has disclosed.

According to Dr. John Koku Awoonor-Williams, malaria is also responsible for about 53.3% of all out-patient cases and 41.4% of all admissions in the region. Malaria infection during pregnancy, he added, also causes maternal anaemia and placenta risks to the mother, the foetus and the newborn.

The Regional Director made these known when he opened a six-day workshop on “Social and Behavioural Change Communication (SBCC) for Malaria Control and Prevention” in Bolgatanga, Upper East Regional capital. The workshop was organised by the Anglican Diocesan Development and Relief Organisation (ADDRO) in collaboration with the Episcopal Relief and Development for selected staff from the United States of America President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI) and the Ghana Health Service (GHS).

Dr. Awoonor-Williams said since Ghana drew a ten-year strategic plan based on the Roll Back Malaria Strategy which the World Health Organisation (WHO) launched in 1998, the goals of the Upper East Region to reduce the burden of malaria by 50% by the year 2010 and by 75% by the year 2015 as inspired by the National Malaria Control Programme (NMCP) were still far from being reached despite various interventions.

“The only way to end death from malaria is to end malaria itself. We can start by reducing the number of infected mosquitoes. We can also keep mosquitoes from biting people. Equally, we can keep people who are bitten from getting infected. Finally, we can keep people who are infected from transmitting the parasites back to mosquitoes,” he recommended.

He also expressed worries that for close to two years now, no Long-Lasting Insecticide-Treated Nets (LLITNs) have been received in the region through the regional health system. The Regional Director, however, commended ADDRO and other NGOs including “Nurses on Tour” for providing free insecticide-treated nets to needy communities in the region. 

The Regional Director lamented the shortages of Rapid Diagnostic Test Kits (RDTs) especially at the lower health facilities where laboratory services are lacking. He said the shortages had invariably contributed to several cases being suspected and classified as malaria simply because no tests are conducted. The situation, he observed, had been contributing to the ever-increasing figures. He entreated the general public to cooperate actively in the behavioural-change campaign against malaria since malaria control without the collective efforts of members of the society would remain impossible.

The Technical Director of Health for the Episcopal Relief and Development, Dr. Stephen Dzisi, said the workshop was one of the numerous health-centred activities that were being funded through a grant secured in 2009 by the Episcopal Relief and Development under the PMI.

He further made it known that his outfit had been providing partners with financial and technical assistance through its Malaria Community Programme (MCP). The programme, he said, was to help reduce the burden of malaria and other diseases in the communities where the programme had empowered the people. The Bawku West and the Garu-Tempane Districts are the only two areas where the programme is being undertaken in the region.

Recounting the success stories in the two districts, Dr. Dzisi said the programme within the past two years had witnessed a momentous increase in the number of people that used the insecticide-treated nets and a significant drop in malaria deaths in the communities. “This shows that this programme has been successful towards reducing the burden of the disease in the various communities,” he said. He mentioned limited funding and lack of logistics as the major challenges to meeting the swelling demand from the other districts where malaria is also prevalent.

Mr. Moses Nanang, Malaria Programme Manager for ADDRO, said over 25,000 insecticide-treated nets had been properly distributed and appropriately hung by the 564 community volunteers that ADDRO had trained in 200 communities in the two districts. He made it known that the Malaria Community Programme sought to reach 280 communities in the two districts by the end of its 3-year lifespan. Mr. Nanang said it was time community members made constant use of the nets part of them, sought early treatment for children suspected to be suffering from malaria infection and encouraged their pregnant women to visit the hospital as required.

HEALTH:FIRST LADY QUIVERS AT NURSING MOTHERS’ TRAFFIC ADVENTURES

FIRST LADY QUIVERS AT NURSING MOTHERS’ TRAFFIC ADVENTURES

Edward Adeti’s Report, Upper East, Ghana

Ghana First Lady E.N. Mills

After spotting a number of bareheaded nursing mothers riding motorbikes on the Bolgatanga Highway upon her arrival in the Upper East Region ahead of a way-forward forum on maternal deaths in Ghana, cherubic-faced First Lady Dr. Mrs. Ernestina Naadu Mills has remarked with worry that the region’s women are brave but needlessly “are going beyond being brave.”

The highway bravado and traffic adventures of some nursing mothers ironically greeted the first ever official visit by the First Lady whose aim in the region coincidentally was to launch a regional campaign for the general safety of pregnant women and nursing mothers. The First Lady, who apparently had peeped through her own screens during a convoy drive on the highway and the main street in the regional capital (where motorcycles have remained the most widespread automobiles among youths and adults today), expressed fears that the most likely tragic consequence of riding without crash helmets particularly on nursing mothers and their infants just might scale up the already-worrying maternal death rates in the country.

She was speaking at the SSNIT Conference Hall in Bolgatanga, Upper East Regional capital, during an advocacy forum on the Campaign on Accelerated Reduction of Maternal Mortality in Africa (CARMMA). The advocacy forum, which heralds the extension of the campaign to the district and community level, brought together district policy makers and traditional authorities under the theme: “Ghana cares: No woman should die while giving life.”

“I made the journey by road from Accra so that I could appreciate our green pastures. This morning, I noticed something on the road. I must say the women here are brave, because I don’t see it in Accra. I saw women riding motorcycles. So many of them. To go about their duties is good. But one that really shocked me was a mother, young mother, with a baby on her back, tied to her back, and another child between her and the steers. She was riding without wearing a protective helmet. Later on, I saw another mother with one child. I mean, that’s going beyond being brave. Life must be saved at all costs,” the seraphic-voiced First Lady told the solemn audience.

She underscored the urgent need to intensify efforts at ensuring the safety of pregnant women particularly in developing Africa. Her call comes as experts warn that Ghana will see 12,000 maternal deaths, 200,000 infant deaths and one million disabilities by the close of 2015 if interventions delay.

Statistics on “safe motherhood” made available by the Upper East Regional Health Directorate during the forum show that 50,000 to 100,000 maternal deaths occur yearly due to unsafe abortion with over 74 million unwanted or unplanned pregnancies occurring every year globally.

Recounting her own contribution since the national launch of the campaign in 2009, the First Lady said she had urged Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) and the Private Sector among other stakeholders to increase efforts and mobilise resources to accelerate the reduction of maternal mortality in Ghana.

“Building on one of the global campaign strategies of mobilising political commitment and support of key stakeholders including national authorities and communities to mobilise additional domestic resources in support of maternal and newborn health, I am here today to extend the campaign to the district and community level and also to dialogue, advocate and solicit your commitment to increase resources and societal change in support of Maternal Health,” announced Dr. Mrs. E.N. Mills.

The Upper East Regional Minister, Mr. Mark Owen Woyongo, in his welcome address noted that 77% of expectant mothers who suffer maternal deaths come from rural areas “where there is lack of skilled personnel like doctors, midwives, poor referral systems and high illiteracy rates with socio-cultural barriers.”

According to him, out of the 26 maternal deaths in 2011 so far in the region, 31% of the deaths are from Bawku Municipality whilst 34% of the same number are between the ages of 25 and 29 years. “Surprisingly, 54% of the mothers who died ever had one or two children, meaning that majority of them were married women. It is also worth mentioning that 23% of the maternal deaths were handled by doctors and 31% were handled by midwives whilst 9% were handled by trained and untrained TBAs,” the Regional Minister disclosed.

Whilst emphasising the need to build the capacity of staffs as well as orient and frequently monitor the Traditional Birth Assistants (TBAs), Mr. Woyongo announced that pickup vehicles and ambulances had been purchased with the help of the Regional Health Directorate to improve on transportation to the next referral levels.

Making a brief statement, Dr. Gloria J. Quansah Asare, Director of Family Health Division of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), said an alarming number of communities in the country “are losing mothers, wives, daughters, sisters and friends who die as a result of bleeding, complications of unsafe abortion, hypertensive diseases of pregnancy, obstructed labour, infections as well as indirect causes especially from malaria and anaemia.” She assured that improved access to skilled attendance at birth by a midwife or a doctor, emergency obstetric and newborn care and use of family planning and other quality healthcare would help curb “these painful deaths that lead to our unacceptably high maternal mortality.”    

The Representative of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), Dr. Bernard Coquelin, made it known that the UNFPA was the lead UN agency in ensuring that the campaign achieves the MDG 5 by 2015 in Ghana. Dr. Coquelin said evidence all over the world had shown that implementing good policies and programmes such as Emergency Obstetric and Newborn Care (EmONC), family planning (FP) and skilled birth attendance (SBA) played a big role in reducing maternal deaths. He appealed to all Municipal and District Chief Executives to take a deep reflection and lead the local efforts at ensuring improved maternal and child health as well as reduction of maternal mortality.

PESTICIDE MISUSE: AN EMERGING POISON TO BREAST MILK AND PROVEN THREAT TO POTENCY

PESTICIDE MISUSE: AN EMERGING POISON TO BREAST MILK AND PROVEN THREAT TO POTENCY

Edward Adeti’s Report, Upper East, Ghana

  A campaign launched in Ghana's Upper East Region to highlight and check the dangers of agrochemical misapplication has revealed with well-observed evidence that exposure of women to pesticides via indirect consumption will not only endanger babies by poisoning their mothers’ breast milk but could also deny their fathers of producing more babies by rendering them impotent with time.

Speaker after speaker at the launch grieved over the harm that misuse and mishandling of agrochemicals had continued to bring upon humankind and the environment globally. It is estimated by the World Health Organisation (WHO) that 1.5 million cases of pesticide poisoning that occur every year result in 20,000 fatalities in developing countries; but experts at the launch said the figure was gross underestimation. Shockingly, over 40 billion dollars is spent every year globally in the pesticide trade that rather has been responsible for an alarming number of deaths, poisoning cases, birth defects and environmental pollutions among other tragedies.

Between July and October 2010, a total of 15 people died with several others seriously injured in separate households in three districts of the Upper East Region, namely Garu-Tempane, Bawku West and Talensi-Nabdam, after eating what preliminary investigations by the Ghana Health Service (GHS) and forensic laboratory investigations by the Standard Board later confirmed to be “endosulfan”, an organo-chlorine pesticide used mainly for agricultural purposes. Out of the seventy-seven cases that were reported in Bawku West and Garu-Tempane alone between October and December 2010, twenty-two deaths were recorded.

Dr. John Koku Awoonor-Williams, Upper East Regional Director of Health, made it known that crops could carry highly toxic chemical residues owing to the failure of most farmers to control pests only based on the instructions of the pesticide manufacturers. He said besides death, chronic respiratory symptoms, body itching, distended abdomen, respiratory track illness, chest and throat diseases and frequent diarrhoea that the unsuspecting public could suffer through misapplication of agrochemicals, cancer was another price to pay for long-term exposure to agrochemicals.

The Director observed: “The Upper East Region uses large quantities of pesticides and fertilisers. There is very little control on their use creating widespread problems of unregulated importation, distribution, marketing, utilisation and very poor enforcement. Supply and distribution is mainly in the hands of untrained, uninformed, unauthorised and sometimes fraudulent distributors who can best be described as opportunists.”     

Dr. Awoonor-Williams prescribed an intense dose of public awareness and education on the emerging menace and also called for community-based vigilance and proper regulation and inspection of licences and certificates of all dealers and salesmen of chemicals. Whilst urging the general public to expose those who deliberately misapplied agrochemicals and advising farmers to take precautionary measures in the course of using and storing agrochemicals, he also paused to ask: “If the advanced countries have used agrochemicals and have realised their health implications and are abandoning them, why are we eager to embrace them?”

The campaign which is being spearheaded in the region by the Youth Harvest Foundation Ghana (YHFG) in collaboration with the Presbyterian Agricultural Services (PAS) also saw the Deputy Upper East Regional Minister, Mrs. Lucy Awuni, passionately inviting all and sundry to the fight against misuse of chemicals in the country.

Mrs. Awuni admitted that although there was the Environmental Protection Act of 1994 (act 490) which forbids importation of unregistered pesticides, there was little hope that the Act could be effectively implemented due to the delay being caused by the changing structures in government departments. She called on Parliament to expedite action on the draft legislation of the Act to ensure a better and safe environment.

The Deputy Regional Minister also called on municipal and district assemblies in the region to develop, as part of their medium-term development plans, a coherent plan on the use of alternatives to pesticides in farming activities.  

Mr. Kofi Azumah, Upper East Regional Officer of the Plant Protection and Regulatory Services Department (PPRSD), who described farmers’ use of agrochemicals in the region as “very alarming” disclosed that the region had about 158 registered dealers with the Ghana Agro-Input Dealers Association). Most farmers, he noted, did not know the danger their bodies could suffer for not safeguarding themselves with appropriate protective equipment.

“Some just use any light shirt, no protection for the eye or nose and feet. Others do not also wash their hands and protective clothing immediately after spraying activity but wait until evening when they wash down to go to bed,” he said. Mr. Azumah advocated for continuous training and education of agro-inputs or pesticide dealers, continuous education of farmers, provision of logistics for inspection and monitoring of pesticide dealers and strict enforcement of existing legislation on pesticide distribution and use.   

The Coordinator of the Pesticide Misuse Campaign, Mr. Philip Atiim, also expressed revulsion at the rate at which pesticides were increasingly being sold through informal networks of small distributors and hawkers, many of whom he said had no technical knowledge of pesticide hazards or safe handling.

“Unregistered and dangerous pesticides have found their way into farms and are being used for the cultivation of foods, such as onions, tomatoes and water melons.  When these pesticides are used on vegetables and for grain storage, food is contaminated. The campaign is everybody’s business. We are all at risk,” he lamented. The campaign is sponsored by theChristian Aid of the Great Britain and ICCO of the Netherlands.

FAMILY PLANNING: LOW COVERAGE MAY DRAW GHANA BACK FROM MDGs FINISH LINE

FAMILY PLANNING: LOW COVERAGE MAY DRAW GHANA BACK FROM MDGs FINISH LINE

Edward Adeti’s Report, Bolga, Upper East, Ghana.

Dr. John Koku Awoonor-Williams

The Upper East Regional Director of Health Services, Dr. John Koku Awoonor-Williams, has warned that Ghana might at last find herself far behind the 2015 finish line of the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) on maternal deaths due to low family planning coverage.

He says Ghana can only actualise the goal in 2015, like the other well-performing countries, by doing effective skipping and tackling of certain hurdles which include unfavourable cultural practices, apathy, inadequate service personnel, lack of access to health facilities, ignorance, shortage of devices, high cost in deprived communities and unavailability of family planning services in some areas.

The Regional Director was speaking in a speech read on his behalf by Mr. Emmanuel Ayire, a Public Health Nursing Officer, at a durbar at Sokabisi, a suburb of Bolgatanga. It was organised by the Ghana Health Service (GHS) with sponsorship from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) to climax this year’s Family Planning Week Celebration in the Bolgatanga Municipality. The celebration, which took place concurrently in the Talensi-Nabdam District, was themed: “Contraceptives; Your Right to Accurate Information.”

“In order to deal with maternal deaths, we need to strengthen efforts aimed at improving family planning coverage which at the moment stands at 15%. This means that the unmet need for family planning is 85%. If we are to address maternal mortality in this region, then, we have to vigorously tackle the unmet need for family planning in the region,” Dr. Awoonor-Williams underscored.

Updates from the Regional Director on maternal death situation in the region pegged the region with 27 maternal deaths in 2008, 32 in 2009 and 34 in 2010. He pointed out that the region’s maternal death picture was worsened by unsafe abortions among adolescents who encountered unplanned pregnancies from unprotected sex. Five out of the thirty-two maternal deaths recorded in 2009 were due to unsafe abortion, according to his report.

Among the 203, 984 pregnant individuals who were registered under the Ante Natal Care (ANC) between 2006 and 2010 in the region, 29,793 were teenagers.

He observed that teenagers who were attached to such harmful factors as peer pressure, rebelliousness, selfishness and lack of quality parental relationships (too authoritative or too permissive) invariably were driven into unplanned pregnancies and, subsequently, unsafe abortion and its grim complications and grave implications. The Regional Director listed death as well as such reproductive scars as infertility and deformities as the inevitable results of unsafe abortion.

He noted that pregnancy-carrying teenagers were students who lacked the physical and psychological wherewithal to bear the pregnancies as well as such parenting skills as smiling, touching or verbally communicating with the children to raise socially acceptable youths. Whilst urging women in leadership to take up the issues of teenage pregnancy seriously, Dr. Awoonor-Williams also called for companionship and counseling for all young people in the region. He stressed that the region already was too overloaded with poverty, disease and mortality that it could not afford to include the burdensome implications of teenage pregnancy.

“We need to reduce teenage pregnancies in the region to the barest minimum. Getting pregnant at this age can be life-threatening because the girl is not mature physically and psychologically. Mortality rates are four times higher for a pregnant teenager than for women aged between 25 and 29 years. The unborn child is at risk, too,” he stated.

Miss Joyce Bagina, Bolgatanga Municipal Director of Health, unveiling the family planning picture of the municipality, said only 25 out of every 100 women in 2008 showed practical interest in how their families should be planned. The figure dropped to 20 in 2009 and rose to 21 in 2010. She said among the unconcerned 75% of the women were individuals who, after getting unintended pregnancies from unprotected sex, rushed to drug stores and herbalists to terminate the pregnancies without recourse to the Reproductive and Child Health Unit.

She announced that services were available for those who wanted to have sex without developing pregnancy, adding that the assumption that family planning methods affected the couple and contaminated the breast milk was false. As some men are said to view family planning as encouraging wives to cheat on their husbands, Miss Bagina said the issue of infidelity in marriage had nothing to with family planning services but the sheer absence of morality and mutual trust.  

“All we want to see henceforth is the men enthusiastically accompanying their wives to the family planning centres to enjoy the peace and happiness that family planning has to offer,” the Municipal Director entreated.  

The durbar, which saw a thrilling drama on family planning enacted by the Red Cross Mothers, also afforded the community members the opportunity to know the actual prices of the family planning devices. Reports are rife that some health staff and private peddlers turn away poor and family-planning-seeking people by charging them inflated prices for the devices, thereby exposing them to needless reproductive complications.  

It was announced at the durbar that the devices including depo provera and norigynon should be sold at 50 pesewas each whilst the male condom (3 pieces), the female condom and jadelle were supposed to be sold at 10 pesewas, 30 pesewas and Gh¢2.00 respectively. Also in attendance were Miss Victoria Navro, a veteran Public Health Nurse, and Mr. James Adongaga, a veteran educationist, who chaired the event.

HEALTH: GHANA AIDS COMMISSION ACCUSED OF PROMOTING HOMOSEXUALITY

GHANA AIDS COMMISSION ACCUSED OF PROMOTING HOMOSEXUALITY

Edward Adeti’s Report, Upper East, Ghana

 In less than a week after the Ghana AIDS Commission only seemed to have justified its public distribution of what some residents of the Upper East Region once described as a handbill designed to promote homosexuality in Ghana, the Joymakers Outreach says it is far from over.

The handbill, which had on its front side two half-way naked men with one cuddling the other and only an emphasis on protection, was among a number of free flyers that were distributed in bulk by the Commission during a durbar organised in Bolgatanga in commemoration of the World AIDS Day on Thursday December 15, 2011. Although a number of participants raised eyebrows during an open forum at the durbar, the organisers brushed the concerns aside, citing public misinterpretations and influenced views of the message.

But the President of the Joymakers Outreach, Mr. Desmond Winimi Alale, strongly has insisted that the flyer, contrary to the Commission’s claim, is altogether loudly suggestive and permissive of same-sex relationship on account of its imagery and safety note. To buttress his point further, he said about one hundred people whose opinions he had sampled on the flyer had confirmed that it only connoted endorsement and promotion of homosexuality.

Speaking to newsmen during a press conference in Bolgatanga, Mr. Alale, who expressed worry that the country’s moral and social pillars would fall apart if such information continued to spread, asked the Commission to halt the distribution at once and destroy the same stuff still in its store with an open apology. The President added that a health professional, in a private interview with him (the President), had despairingly described homosexuality as a real and undefeatable practice in Ghana and defended the production and distribution of such flyers as a necessary measure to curb HIV/AIDS spread.

“If homosexuality is illegal in Ghana , then, distribution of flyers to facilitate information to homosexuals is equally illegal. Homosexuality is not our culture and lifestyle. Circulating such flyers, which was designed with funding from the USAID, is giving homosexuals the very right that we as a nation have said we won’t give them,” he stressed.

Whilst asking appropriate authorities to penalise the Commission to serve as a deterrent to other government-based organisations, Mr. Alale commended President John Evans Atta Mills for firmly standing up to pro-gays world leaders despite the aid-cut threat and pressure to comply. He reminded Ghanaians that, besides the practice being an eyesore to God, it was also a threat to human extinction and had a number of health implications that would drain a whole national treasure to manage or treat. He entreated civil society organisations, organs of government, NGOs, political and religious bodies to join hands in preventing the legalisation of homosexuality in Ghana .

He, however, said: “We must not condemn homosexuals but condemn the act and sin of homosexuality. We must be kind to them and help them to overcome this degrading tendency. We must assure them that they can overcome it. There is no human moral failure that cannot be overcome.  There are many who were once rapists, armed robbers and homosexuals in our societies. Upon acknowledgement of those tendencies as sinful and evil, they sought help and they are now free from its addiction.”

Miss Gifty Amoshie, Public Relations Officer of the group, who said public demonstration would be the last thing members of the group would consider even if the Commission ignored their demand, said the group would rely on persuasive talks with the agencies responsible for the production and distribution of the flyers to close down the spread.

Joymakers Outreach is a non-denominational evangelistic youth group headquartered in the Upper East Region. Launched in May this year with backing from the Assemblies of God Church, the High Powered Ministries and the Presbyterian Church of Ghana among others, it has been working tirelessly to lead lost souls to Christ through music, drama and choreography. It is the first and only organised group so far to have publicly confronted the Ghana AIDS Commission since the introduction and distribution of the flyer rocked the regional capital and left a cross-section of the public in divergent views and suppressed murmurs.