Justin Kodua (left) receiving the phones from Chief Nsarko (in a hat)
The Youth Employment Agency (YEA) has received 1,000 Huawei Smartphones valued at $100,000 from Millennium Promise, a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) for beneficiaries of the health assistant module of the Agency, who have been posted to the rural and deprived areas of the country to work.
Making the donation yesterday to management of YEA, the country director of Millennium Promise, Chief Nathaniel Ebo Nsarko said as a global organization, which has been assisting the rural communities in the area of health, education and infrastructural development, Millennium Promise found it prudent to donate the smartphones to YEA to be given to health assistants who are working in the remotest parts of the country to aid their work.
He said the smartphones will help the health assistants to easily communicate with health professionals stationed at nearby health facilities for direction in treatment of less complicated ailments or for referrals to those health facilities in cases of health conditions which are beyond them.
The Country Director of Millennium said the organization, which is championing for one million community health workers, started a pilot of the use of smartphones in the delivery of health service in the Ashanti region by providing 938 smartphones, 81 tablets and nine laptops to the Ghana Health Service;.
He said the Millennium Challenge has also trained Community Health Workers and e-health technical assistants in 20 districts of the Ashanti region to use the ce-tracker enabled smartphones to register household members, including pregnant women, children and also track individual health problems at the household level and support individuals to receive treatment at health facilities.
“It is our belief that this donation, coupled with the ICT application system developed by our organisation, can help strengthen the monitoring and evaluation capabilities already initiated by YEA,” he noted.
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of YEA, Justin Kodua Frimpong, thanked the organisation for the gesture and expressed the belief that Millennium Promise will continue to support the Agency.
He said that the smartphones will undoubtedly complement the work of the health assistants.
Mr Frimpong however appealed to the Ghana Health Service to absorb the health assistants after completing their two-year term of service so that they could continue to offer their vital services for the benefit of Ghanaians.
He also appealed to the Millennium Promise to help provide the Monitoring and Evaluation Unit of the Agency with similar smartphones to boost its work.
By Thomas Fosu Jnr