Community Health Matters - North Tongu

The girls from the village have gathered for a sexual health workshop.

Volta Region: Over the last two years AMURT and Seva Clinic have run a health education campaign in the Mafi-Zongo Water project area and adjacent communities. This has involved village meetings, mostly  with women only, prioritizing topics of everyday importance in the area, such as malaria, diarrhoea, dehydration, malnutrition, high blood pressure, family planning and abuse of drugs, in addition to basic hygiene and sanitation.

 In the schools we have given widely popular classes to the younger children about hand washing and malaria, enlivened by songs composed in the local language. Unwanted teenage pregnancies and unsafe abortions are major problems in the communities, and AMURT and Seva Clinic have sought to address this through Sexual Health Education programmes in the Secondary Schools.

Recognition for our work turns into inspiration to move on

    In January, AMURT and Seva Clinic’s achievements were praised by the District Health Director during their Annual Meeting attended by representatives of all health posts, clinics and hospitals in the district. The Health Department has now asked AMURT to assist the government health posts in the project area. AMURT has so far responded by providing a water standpipe to the new Agoe Clinic, as well as furniture: chairs, benches, tables and a cabinet. There are now two community health nurses posted there but they lack equipment, so our next step will therefore be assistance with supplies and more training to the staff of the health posts.

Expanded Health Outreach Programme

    Inspired by the success of our ongoing programmes, in February AMURT, together with the Seva Clinic, decided to expand our health outreach and initiate a new exciting program of training Health Promoters in the villages. The goal is to localize health knowledge so that the health education in the schools and communities can be ongoing and not depend on visitors and overseas volunteers.

We have started with a group of 13 determined women, each chosen by the women in their respective villages. The programme has been given the name Kekeli, which means brightness. It can also mean sunrise or enlightenment, symbolizing the light of knowledge dispelling the darkness of ignorance. The slogan of the program is ‘Women together for health and development”’.

The women have now completed their training and the graduation ceremony was held on the 10th of April. We have also translated the 80 page manual to Ewe (the local language) and provided each woman with their own copy. AMURT and the Seva Clinic hope to expand the Kekeli program to 50-60 women, each covering one village, by the end of 2008.

We are very excited about this programme as it has the true potential to take our community health work to a whole new level. Initially the emphasis will be on health education and prevention, but if things go well, the women will get the opportunity to learn more skills to enable them to meet the health needs of their communities.

Graduation time! Bridget and Silje (far right), who conducted the training with the assistance of Bernice and Enionam (far left) from the Seva Clinic posing together with all the Kekeli-trainees.