UNICEF-Ghana MBFHI Project Empowers New Mothers To Drive Change For Optimal Breastfeeding And New Born Care In The Upper East Region.

Theresa Akumbono, Facilitating a session with mothers Photo © Dome Emmanuel Mba

UNICEF-Ghana and the Ghana Health Service is partnering with a local CSO, Rural Initiatives for Self Empowerment (RISE-Ghana) in the Kasena Nankana West District of the Upper East Region to implement a project dubbed “Mother Baby Friendly Health Facility Initiative (MBFHI) with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation of the USA.

The project is empowering new mothers across the various interest groups to lead local efforts towards increasing demand for ante natal and post natal services by identifying and confronting barriers to uptake of optimal practices through peer to peer learning and support.

“As new mothers and members of mother-to-mother support groups (MTMSG) you can encourage each other and your bahaviour significantly influences your peers. We want you to understand the importance of the optimal breastfeeding, immunization, birth registration and infant and young child feeding among others so that you can serve as Ambassadors and help reduce maternal and newborn deaths to achieve targets in the new born care strategy” – Emmanuel Mba Dome, Project Officer at a community durbar in Kaasi.

“Today I feel very much empowered to step in the shoes of health workers and to educate my peers using the counseling cards, I want more opportunities like this to reach out to more mothers, fathers and other influential community members so that mothers and their children can be safe” - Theresa Akumbono, 27 Year-Old Mother at Longo.