Dormaa-Ahenkro (B/A), April 29, GNA - Dr Aaron Offei, Brong-Ahafo Regional Director of Health Service, has commended religious organisations in the country for complementing government efforts to ensure basic health care. He urged stakeholders in basic health care delivery to assume a more proactive stance for a rapid improvement in the health status of the people.

The Regional Director was speaking at a fund raising function aimed at renovating existing structures for a proposed midwifery training school in Dormaa Ahenkro. Dr Offei announced that only one of the nation's 13 Midwifery Training schools is located in the region and added that most of the midwives were nearing their retirement age. He said the school was being established at a time when expanded health facilities in the region required more midwives to cater for the increasing number of pregnant women. Dr Offei said the incidence of maternal mortality and still-birth though comparatively low in the region, posed challenges to health institutions and that required collective effort and approach to address them.

He called on religious organisations to strengthen their capacities and implement policies and programmes that would help improve the social status of people. The chairman of the implementation sub-committee on fund-raising, Reverend Hayford D. Asirifi said the fund-raising would continue until the school eventually took off in 2010. Rev. Asirifi, who is District Pastor of the Presbyterian Church at Dormaa, urged people of the area to put aside their religious differences and contribute to the success of the midwifery school, which he described as Dormaaman's property. 29 April 09