By Razak Baba
The Ashanti Regional Health Directorate is using this year’s Global Handwashing Celebrations to raise awareness about the benefits of handwashing with soap among the populace, using schoolchildren as change agents.
For a start, the Directorate, with funding support from UNICEF-Ghana, is using 16 selected basic schools in the Ashanti Region to enhance knowledge of good handwashing practises among schoolchildren.
The 16 selected basic schools have health clubs which were established during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic with the aim of whipping interest in the observance of hand hygiene among the pupils. Speaking at the launch of the initiative in Kumasi, the Regional Health Director, Dr. Emmanuel Tenkorang, said good hand hygiene is a cornerstone of safe and effective health care. He described it as a highly cost-effective public health measure that is also crucial to protecting against a range of diseases like COVID-19, pneumonia, and diarrhoea.
Dr. Tenkorang said resilience matters now more than ever in health care, with COVID-19 putting health care providers under unprecedented strain.
The Kumasi Metro School Health Education Programme Coordinator, Mrs. Vida Owusu, explained that the initiative would empower and protect schoolchildren through the observation of handwashing in daily life.
Highlights of the event included the distribution of tissues and liquid detergents to the beneficiary schools.