The Savannah Regional Health Directorate has appealed to the people of the region to support the Girls’ Iron Folic Tablets Supplementation (GIFTS) program to help in ending anemia among adolescent girls in the region and in Ghana.
Speaking at a media and stakeholder engagement on Girls’ Iron Folic Tablets Supplementation (GIFTS) program in Damongo on 18th January, 2022, the Savannah Regional Nutrition Officer Mr Brian Kamara bemoaned the misconceptions around the GIFTS program with some misconceiving tablets as family planning pills, adding that,” we need the strong partnership and support of the media to correct some of these misconceptions”.
He disclosed that anemia remains a problem of public health significance in Ghana with a prevalence rate of 26% among young adults aged 15-19 years in 2017.
Mr Kamara said the GIFTS program was being implemented as an inter-sectorial intervention between the Ghana Health Service and the Ghana Education Service with their partners to promote health and nutrition education and enhance behavior change to control and prevent anemia among the girl child in the country.
The Savannah Regional director of Health Services, Dr Chrysantus Kubio in an address used the opportunity to advise the people of the Savannah Region to take up the Covid-19 vaccination exercise very serious.
He said the Savannah Region has so far recorded only 12% of the population in the region taking the jab as we enter the fourth wave of the pandemic with a lot of people resisting the jab.
Dr Chrysantus Kubio added that Savannah Region has received enough stock of the COVID-19 vaccines for the exercise and therefore called on the media to help address the public misconceptions and resitancy to the COVID-19 jab in order to reduce the risk of spread of the virus.
He further used the opportunity to dispel rumors of meningitis outbreak in the region.
On the GIFTS program Dr Kubio said there was the need to incorporate health and nutrition education among adolescent girls both in school and out of school to promote healthy behaviors and eradicate misconceptions surrounding the Iron Folic Acid Supplementation.
Source: nkilgifmonline.com
