It is important for government to involve the participation of community and faith based leaders in major decision making processes in the country, Mr. Dickens Thunde, National Director of World Vision Ghana has said.
He said information concerning maternal health and the proper timing and spacing of pregnancies can best be achieved through faith and community leaders to women living in their various communities.
Mr. Thunde, speaking to the Goldstreet Business in Accra, on the Project Closure Learning Event of the Healthy Timing and Spacing of Pregnancy (HTSP) initiative, said the HTSP project involved preventive health behaviour that could be achieved using a number of modern contraceptive methods.
He however, maintained that albeit, the use of community and faith leaders as crusaders against indiscriminate childbirth, can also serve as a birth control measure.
The Health and Nutrition Technical Manager of World Vision Ghana, Micah Ayo Olad, appealed to community leaders and faith based organisations to volunteer their time to help intensify awareness on the need to ensure reasonable spacing in childbirth.
Mr. Olad said, the disclosure from the World Vision team has informed some faith leaders to form the Congregation Help and Action Team (CHAT). It role includes the development of guidelines and action plans to monitor issues concerning women.
He said the engagement of faith leaders to take up social issues, especially those that relate to health and maternal issues, yielded positive results.
Director of the Family Health Division at the Ghana Health Service, Dr. Patrick Aboagye, said, women must give the needed attention to family planning in order to ensure proper timing and spacing of their pregnancies.
“Family planning helps improve women’s health and faith based leaders who are mostly listened to in the society must continuously do their best to ensure that the cost and burdens of purchasing contraceptives is reduced through awareness creation on the need to give healthy spacing time frame to pregnancies,” he said.
By Wisdom Jonny-Nuekpe
