CHILDREN IN BAWKU FACE HEALTH RISK (D/G Tuesday July 22,2008 PAGE 20)

MOST children in the Bawku Municipality, especially those under five years of age, stand the risk of contracting infectious diseases because about 78 per cent of them who were expected to be immunised could not do so due to the conflict.
The Bawku Municipal Director of Health Services, Dr Mensah Afful, painted the gloomy picture at Bawku when he addressed the youth of all the tribes in the municipality at a meeting organised by the Bawku Literary Society (BLS).
IBIS Ghana, a non-governmental organisation (NGO), sponsored the event.
Dr Mensah Afful said as a health policy, his outfit was expected to immunise 90 per cent of children below the age of five against polio and measles, but as of March, this year, between 20.4 per cent and 22.3 per cent of the children in the area had been immunised against polio and measles.
The figures, he said, were low compared to 26.9 per cent and 28.2 per cent coverage for polio and measles during the same period last year.
Dr Mensah noted that the situation had resulted in a pool of infections leading to rising number of deaths among children because most of the nurses could not move freely to some parts of the municipality for the immunisation while parents equally could not go to the health centres to have their children immunised.
"Even now that the area is experiencing relative calm, hospital attendance is very low and one may wonder where they take the sick to and this is becoming a great worry to the health directorate," he lamented.
Dr Mensah said performance indicators on immunisation, deliveries and out-patients department (OPD) were all going down as a result of the restriction on the movement of people.
He said only six doctors made up of two Cubans and two Ghanaians as general doctors and two ophthalmologists, were currently at post and they were working under serious stress.
Dr Mensah Afful described the conflict as unproductive considering the numerous negative effects it had had on the socio-economic life of the people, especially the health implications the people were grappling with.
For her part, the Human Resource Officer of the Ghana Education Service (GES) in Bawku, Madam Fatima Seidu, said teaching and learning came to a standstill any time the conflict intensified.
She added that as a result of the conflict, a lot of teachers, especially the non-natives, had been thronging the Municipal Directorate of the GES to seek transfers and releases, to the detriment of the pupils.
According to Madam Seidu, her recent visit to some of the basic schools in the area revealed that only two out of the 10 teachers were in some of the schools, adding that in some cases only 50 out of 150 pupils population were present.
She explained that education was the bedrock of development for every society, and therefore, appealed to the youth to influence their neighbours positively when they returned to the various communities so that there would be effective teaching and learning.
Speaking on the theme: "Tolerance Amongst the Youth — A Prerequisite for sustainable peace in Bawku", the President of BLS, Miss Florence Bombande, said there could never be any meaningful development in Bawku if there was no peace.
She, therefore, admonished the youth not to allow themselves to be used as a tool in the conflict because it was their future that was at stake and any lapses on their part could jeopardise them greatly.
Miss Bombande urged the youth in Bawku to see themselves as brothers and sisters and strive to live peacefully.
At the end of the meeting, the youth saw the need for peace to prevail in Bawku and its environs, and therefore, came out with some resolution messages for peace, some of which read “Respect for individual opinions”, “Let's live in peace in Bawku”, “Political campaigns should be peaceful” and “Discipline during the elections”..