Canada Supports Child Care With $9.4m

The Canadian government has announced a funding support of $9.456 million for the Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) to increase paediatric nurse training in Ghana under its scaling-up paediatric nursing care initiative.

The five-year project is expected to improve the health outcomes and survival of approximately 6.7 million newborns and children in Ghana.

It also aims to strengthen health systems through training paediatric nurses and healthcare workers in the poorest underserved communities in Ghana.

The project would be implemented by SickKids, together with the Ministry of Health (MoH) and the Ghana College of Nurses and Midwives to advance nursing and midwifery professionalism, practice and leadership in Ghana.

This initiative is part of Canada's ongoing commitment to maternal, newborn and child health. It would also help Ghana's Ministry of Health reach its target to train 1,500 paediatric nurse specialists over the next 10 to 15 years to boost capacity to deliver child survival interventions.

Lois Brown, parliamentary secretary, on behalf of the Minister of International Development, Christian Paradis, announced this at an event hosted by SickKids.

It builds on the success of a Canada-funded pilot project with SickKids that delivered innovative paediatric health worker training and strengthened the capacity of paediatric health systems in Ghana, Ethiopia and Tanzania between 2009 and 2014.

The pilot project also established the first specialised paediatric nurse training programme of its kind at the University of Ghana.

'Our government is proud of our successful partnership with SickKids in strengthening paediatric health systems by training healthcare workers to provide quality, cost-effective and sustainable nursing and midwifery care to newborns and children in Ghana,' Lois Brown said.

'Scaling up our efforts will help improve the health and save the lives of even more Ghanaian newborns and children,' he added.

Minister Paradis also disclosed that the Canadian government is committed to achieving the goal of ending preventable deaths of mothers and children within a generation.

He said increasing the number of well-trained nurses to strengthen health systems needed to deliver high-impact services to children and families in Ghana will help reach this goal.

'Improving the health of women and children in the developing world is Canada's top international development priority. Working with a wide range of partners to find new and innovative solutions to critical health challenges is key to saving lives,' he said.

Dr Jemima Dennis-Awi, president, Ghana College of Nurses and Midwives, said the nurses and midwives trained through the programme have gone on to become leaders in their communities and active advocates for child health.

'This investment will have both an immediate and ongoing impact on child morbidity and mortality in Ghana,' she said.

 By Jamila Akweley Okertchiri