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“Adolescent health issues have been very topical in the past two years which has dominated the headlines in the past two weeks when it comes to teenage pregnancy.
Several interventions have been put across by the health fraternity to address the health needs of adolescent because is a special group that helps a lot of perculiarities in terms of accessing health care.
The fact that every one out of three persons you meet in the street is likely to be a person of 10 and 19 years makes the issue topical because they form some extent a greater number of the population so addressing their health needs mean that you are addressing about one-third of the health problems in the Ashanti Region or in the country.
As health directorate,we put in several interventions such as the girls iron policy interventions.
The health directorate has specific health services in their core facilities for adolescence , that’s even with family planning, respect to chronic diseases like sickle cell, diabetes,HIV care and then a whole lot of interventions including nutritional interventions.”Dr Michael Rockson Adjei, Deputy Ashanti Regional Health Directorate for Public Health has stated in a stakeholders meeting yesterday.
Dr.Micheal Rockson Adjei further noted , because the directorate has not been able to get so close to this group though they have tried in many years,they still feel alot remain to be done.
According to him,they are lucky to partner with UNICEF to help in one of the districts in the Ashanti Region to ensure that they are able to make strive with respect to adolescent health.
He said,this time round,they are zooming to Asante Akim South District ,the intervention is going to be about health communication.
Adding that,they are teaming up with the traditional authorities with the health directorate with other NGOs in health and the youth of Asante Akim South to ensure that the project succeeds.
The project he said will look at communication in terms of influencing the youth to take up behaviors that will benefit their own health.
The program will run for at least one year.From now till a year by now,the directorate will be following up with monitoring team to ensure that all the interventions are materialized for the benefit of the youth of Asante Akim.
Asante Akim South District has been selected purposely for one or two reasons .One of them being that the directorate has major stakeholder who are in tune with adolescent health. The partnership the Heath Directorate will get from them is important to ensure that the intervention succeeds.
Secondly,the number of youth or persons between 10-19 compared to some of the other districts,they have quite a proportion of them there so they feel that they need to send the intervention to a place they can maximize it impact that’s why Asante Akim South has been selected to pilot the project.
“When we are able to make strive definitely other districts or regions will also benefit from the lessons who will learn from Asante Akim and will roll it over to other areas maybe beyond even our region.
Source:Broadcastergh.com
