Participants at the Advocacy Meeting at the Bongo Soe Health Center
Despite efforts by successive governments to improve health delivery across the country through the Ghana Health Service, some challenges are still militating against the realisation of an improved Health Care across the country.
In many rural communities, apart from the absence of the required Health Workers, reliable Electricity supply and poor road network, there is also the problem of poor telecommunication network coverage, which is hampering quality Health Care.
In the Upper East Region, these same challenges confront the delivery of Quality Health Care, where calls for ambulance services and patients transfer to Referral Health Facilities, do not go through.
In an attempt to overcome the challenge posed by poor road network on Reproductive Health Care, the Ghana Health Service some years ago, introduced a system where Rural Midwives and Community Nurses monitored their pregnant clients through the use Mobile phones.
If the Telecommunication Network coverage was effective even in rural areas, despite the inaccessibility of some communities road, Mobile Phone communication could help the Rural Health Workers to educate and monitor the progress pregnant women and get them to deliver safely even in their hard to reach communities, with the help of trained Traditional Birth Attendants.
A Midwife at the Bongo Soe Health Center in the Bongo District of the Upper East Region, Madam Cecilia Azitariga, is one Health Worker who accepts that, the poor Telecommunication Network coverage is a serious challenge hampering quality and timely Reproductive Health Care.
She, like many others believes that, the situation is adversely affecting effective Health Care delivery, not just in Bongo Soe, but in many other rural communities in the Upper East Region.
Madam Azitariga in a recent interview after an Advocacy Meeting on a project dubbed, “Maternal and Baby Friendly Health Initiative”, explained that, Health Workers at the Bongo Soe Health Center, usually give their contact numbers to their clients, especially Pregnant women, to get in touch with them in case of any emergency or counselling, but most of the clients complain that, attempts to reach them (Health Workers) always prove fruitless.
The situation according to Madam Azitariga, is also affecting their daily and monthly data entry which requires the use of the Internet. The daily and monthly data entries from Health Facilities across the country, helps the Ghana Health Service to produce data for the Ministry of Health and other Stakeholders for research and planning purposes.
The Advocacy Meeting on the “Maternal and Baby Friendly Health Initiative”, with stakeholders was organized by the Integrated Youth Needs and Welfare at the Bongo Soe Health Center, to get the immediate “users” of the facility to come out with suggestions on how to overcome the many local challenges militating against effective Maternal and Baby Health Care at the Facility.
Participants at the Advocacy Meeting called on the various Telecommunication Companies to improve on their coverages in the rural areas to facilitate easy Mobile Phone Communications between Health Workers and their patients, especially Pregnant Women.
Participants pledged to educate their neighbours, to adhere to the education on Exclusive Breast-feeding and regular Maternal Health Care during pregnancy and after delivery.
They want the Bongo District Assembly to extend the district’s road network, to the hard to reach suburbs of Bongo Soe and other communities in the district, to make it easy for community members to access Health Facilities and be visited by Health Workers.
From: Ebo Bruce-Quansah, Bongo Soe