Tema-Ghana, May 8, CDA Consult – Mr. Samuel Atuahene Antwi, Nutritionist at the Tema Metropolitan Health Directorate, has urged mothers and caretakers of toddlers to keep taking their children for “weighing” even after they turn two.
Mr. Antwi claimed that, despite the fact that such children were still obliged to be visited at clinics every six months for vital care and monitoring until the age of five, mothers and caretakers abruptly stopped taking the immunisations.
He gave the advice at a health promotion dialogue titled “Your Health! Our Collective Responsibility,” organised by the Ghana News Agency Tema Regional Office to promote health-related communication and provide a platform for health information dissemination in order to influence personal health choices through improved health literacy.
The Ghana News Agency’s Tema Regional Office established the public health advocacy platform “Your Health! Our Collective Responsibility” to investigate the elements of four health communication approaches: informing, instructing, persuading, and urging.
Mr. Antwi noted that regular visits to child welfare institutions assist health professionals in identifying and diagnosing numerous defects in children for early intervention, noting that difficulties are primarily related to developmental phases such as talking, walking, and others.
He went on to clarify that ‘weighing’ also helps with growth monitoring and promotion because the child’s weight is measured and plotted on a gender-appropriate graph to check for normal growth or any deviations.
The Tema Metro Nutritionist chastised some mothers who brought their children to the welfare clinic, saying that “some mothers come appearing too busy and only want the child to be measured quickly for them to leave.”
He reminded them that the clinic was not just for weighing children, but also for providing advice on proper child care, as the children’s future is based on the type of care they receive as children.
He also stated that mothers are trained on how to properly feed their children, both during the exclusive breastfeeding period and during complementary feeding, and that the child welfare clinics provide family planning services, food demonstrations, hygiene, mosquito net use, and birth certificate registration.
Mr. Antwi reiterated that the children are given vitamin A supplements as well as other immunisations to assist prevent illness and infant mortality.
Among the 13 vaccines given to children by the age of two are BCG, Hepatitis B, yellow fever, measles-rubella, tetanus, diphtheria, influenza, rotavirus, polio, and meningitis A.
According to Mr. Francis Ameyibor, Tema Regional Manager of Ghana News Agency, “GNA-Tema Your Health! Our Collective Responsibility” is a public health advocacy platform created to investigate the four approaches of health communication: informing, teaching, persuading, and encouraging.
Mr. Ameyibor believes that the GNA platform is an excellent communication channel for medical practitioners to educate the public about healthy practises and other general health concerns via the weekly health conversation forum.
