The German Development Cooperation GIZ, Anglogold Ashanti and the Obuasi Health directorate have jointly launched a public health campaign on maternal and child health, as well as infections in the Obuasi Municipality.

The new campaign on the theme “Save a mother, save a child and save yourself”, aims to help prevent and control the spread and effects of infectious diseases, and improve maternal and child health care.

The programme has six expected outcomes, including improving community health facilities, maternal health care and disease prevention.

The rest are, improving capacities in SMEs in pandemic preparedness, strengthening institutions for health promotion and pandemic management and strengthening health and surveillance systems.

Over 85 health personnel including nurses and midwives from health stations in the Obuasi municipality are to benefit from the training to equip health professionals in the municipality. 

This is to enable them adopt measurable precautions in their workplace, embark on public outreach and contribute to the fight against maternal and child mortality, and the spread of communicable diseases. 

Jingles on infection prevention will be also played on community information centres and radio discussions on infection prevention will be held.

Project coordinator, Dr. Paul Okyere of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology School of Public Health, said the project was partly influenced by the coronavirus experience in health service delivery.

He pointed out that Obuasi’s commercial and industrial terrain makes it prone to the spread of contagious diseases.  

“Covid-19 is still with us, there were 415 cases recorded as active cases 8th of October, which means we are not out of the waves yet. We are going to educate the public about the need to continue to follow precautions. We need to protect ourselves and not put people at risk.

“Obuasi is a mining community where a lot of people move in and out. And this put a lot of people at risk. Being a mining community they are at particular risk of a possible outbreak of infectious diseases. That is why we have targeted Obuasi,” he said. 

Senior Manager of Sustainability for Anglogold, Emmanuel Baidoo, disclosed that “the campaign and training form part of the number of interventions Anglogold and GIZ seek to achieve in maternal health promotion”.

“It is part of our 10-year social economic development plan. All is to improve quality healthcare in Obuasi,” he added.