Mrs Patience Ami Mamattah, the Municipal Health Director, Ashaiman, has pledged to support the Healthy Cities For Adolescents (HCA) project, which sought to reintegrate into the school system adolescents who have dropped-out of school due to early pregnancy.
She lauded the project, describing it as a programme instead of a project explaining that a project has timelines but programmes do not, “we need this programme to run for a long time”
Mrs Mamattah stated at an inception meeting for stakeholders in the Ashaiman Municipality, which was on the theme: “HCA Poject- Tamale to Ashaiman, the role of the Stakeholders”.
The HCA is a youth Oriented-Project funded by “Fondation Botnar,” a Switzerland -based foundation with keen interest in adolescent health issues. The project has been rolled out in Tamale and set to be piloted in Ashaiman, hence, required the inputs of stakeholders to address issues in the context of Ashaiman.
According to Mrs. Mamattah, adolescent stage is a transitional period that one can’t escape of which there were issues of misinformation, misdirection, relaxed and not giving the needed attention.
Mrs. Mamattah, therefore, urged the traditional Council, the Assembly members, the media, the legal practitioners, Ghana Education Service and health workers, to help adolescents in dilemma to become better people in the society.
She noted that 60 per cent of the populace in Ashaiman were youth and had a future in which the stakeholders need to play a key role, “if they neglect their responsibility it would affect the community and the country”.
Mrs. Mamattah said the health directorate would work with stakeholders to tackle the issues of adolescent pregnancy in the municipality.
She said they would intensify programmes such as community sensitization, peer groupings, sensitization and other interventions, which would be reviewed from time to time to serve the needs of the adolescent in Ashaiman.
She pleaded with the facility heads, the private hospitals and other agency to help with the adolescents’ corner where they can minister to the adolescents in the municipality.
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Professor Stephen O. Kwankye, Co-Project Director, of Healthy Cities for Adolescents Project, called on all stakeholders to look beyond project initiation to project completion.
He said project completion would offer citizens the benefit of the investment and creates an avenue for sustainability as that was the only way to realize the essence of the project impacting the lives of adolescents in the Municipality.
Prof. Kwankye said the project had been implemented over the past two years in Tamale and as part of their main goals, some of the useful lessons learned could be piloted in Ashaiman.
He mentioned adolescent on wheels programmes, peer-service facilitators (PSEs), livelihood empowerment for returnee migrants, place to place engagements and youth parliament as some of the programmes they have embarked on.
According to Prof. Kwankye, the project sought to reintegrate into the school system adolescents who have dropped out due to early pregnancy.
He said this could be achieved through a collaborative effort by the stakeholders to hold on to the objectives of the project further than the three-year period.
