NIDs Enters Second Day

Accra, Nov. 3, GNA - The Integrated Child Health Campaign aimed at reducing under-five mortality rate by two-thirds by the year 2015 entered its second day on Thursday with some parts of Greater Accra experiencing shortage of Insecticide Treated Nets (ITNs).

The five-day campaign, combining measles and polio immunisation, administering of vitamin A and distribution of 2.1 million free ITNs to children less than two years is expected to boost the survival rate of millions of children.

A visit to the some parts of the Tema sub-districts revealed that many mothers have been attracted to the exercise because of the distribution of free ITNs.

At the Ashalley Botwe Newtown post, mothers started queuing as early as 0430 hours to be served early.

Ms Emefa Voudianyi, a volunteer, said the first day registered over 300 children and 300 ITNs were issued out. However, they could not immunize all the children in the queue because their number.

She said the post had only three volunteers without a nurse and they had to hire a nurse from a private midwifery centre nearby to give out the measles injections.

She explained that the nurse assigned to the post did not turn up and 93going to look for another nurse delayed the start of the exercise and that created a little confusion=94. Ms Voudianyi said the post received only 100 ITNs for Thursday's exercise and said this had forced them to issue to ITNs to only children from zero to 16 months.

'We know this will create another problem because mothers with eligible children who will not be given the ITNs will not be happy with our decision,' she added.

Mrs Eunice Bekoe, a mother, said she was dissatisfied with how the exercise was going, especially the delay in attending to them. 'I am a working mother and I came to join the queue as early as 0500

hours with the hope that I will be attended to in time so that I could go to work but it is past 0900 hours and I am still in the queue.=94 At the Adjirigano post, near East Legon, over 200 children had been immunized as at 1110 hours when the GNA visited the post.

Mrs Rose Agble, Tema Rural Coordinator, told the GNA that the nine immunization points under her had all run out of ITNs but they had enough vaccines. She explained that she was given only 30 sacks of ITNs instead of 1,000 sacks since she had about 15,000 children in her district.

'The ITNs have attracted a lot of mothers and that has increased the number we estimated. Yesterday was bad and it called for the involvement of the East Legon Police to control the crowd that had come to immunize their children,' she said.

The situation was different at the Adenta Housing Down, Adenta Clinic and Ogbojo when the GNA visited.

Dr Kwadwo Antwi Agyei, Programme Manager for the Expanded Immunisation Programme of the Ghana Health Service, told the GNA that the shortage of ITNs in Greater Accra was due to the fact the region received its allocation of the ITNs this week and distribution was still underway.

'We have enough ITNs for the whole country and the problem of shortage should not occur,' he said.

Dr Antwi Agyei noted that various immunisation posts had been issued with coupons to be given to eligible children who would not readily get the ITNs for them to be served immediately the various points had been restocked.

The exercise nationally is expected to target about 5.959 million children from 0 to 59 months for polio and about 5.065 million children from nine months to 59 months for measles. The exercise with cost about 162 billion cedis.

There are 9,050 immunisation points, 9,505 vaccinators and 28,514 volunteers to ensure that all the children are covered. 03 Nov. 06