Growing up healthy

Ensuring children’s survival, protection and healthy development

The government of Ghana finances many of the immunisation programmes in the country. In some regions, however, there are still many children who are not fully immunised. Last year, Plan recruited 333 volunteers to talk to mothers about the importance of vaccinating their children and record the immunisation status of children. We provided logistical support to the Ghana Health Service, which immunised 1,900 children 124 communities.

Another health project involved the evaluation of Plan’s four-year child-survival programme. Some of our main achievements in the 109 communities where we work included:

• Providing more than 50 per cent of families with mosquito nets treated with insecticide, which greatly reduces the risk of contracting malaria
• Giving 60 per cent of children suffering from diarrhoea (a life-threatening disease if left untreated) oral rehydration therapy, a life-saving mixture of water, salt and sugar
• Training 600 community health volunteers to act as a focus for a community’s health needs. For example, they often take responsibility for checking on supplementary feeding programmes, visiting bedridden patients, giving basic health advice and support to other members of the community and organising information sessions about the best ways to prevent certain diseases.