UNICEF, INTYON Commended For MBFHI Project

Beneficiaries of the Mother-Baby-Friendly Health Facility Initiatives (MBFHI) in the Bongo District have commended the United Nations Children's Educational Fund (UNICEF) and the Integrated Youth Needs and Welfare (INTYON) for implementing the project in their district.

They said the move has helped to eradicate some cultural practices that hindered exclusive breastfeeding, maternal and infant health services.

They made these known when the Health and Nutrition Specialist of UNICEF, Dr Priscilla Wobil and some staff of the Integrated Youth Needs and Welfare (INTYON), one of the Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) implementing the project, including some Journalists undertook monitoring and evaluation visits to some of the project communities in the Upper East Region.

The MBFHI which started implementation in 2015 is being piloted in the Kassena-Nankana West, the Bongo District, and the Bawku and Bolgatanga Municipalities aimed at reducing infant and neonatal deaths.

The programme was scaled up in some other communities. For instance in the Bongo District, additional 30 communities were added to the 40 communities totalling 70.

It employed interventions including; advocacy and focus group discussions to ensure increased demand for ante-natal and post-natal services, early initiation to breastfeeding within 30 minutes after birth, exclusive breastfeeding and promoting basic new-born care among others.

It is implemented by other NGOs in partnership with the Ghana Health Service (GHS), with financial support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Among some of the communities visited in the Bongo District included; Adaboya-Tindong, Yaka and the Aweadono where majority of the women indicated that unlike before, they were no longer compelled by mother and father in-laws to give water and food to babies before the six months after birth.

The women groups who stated that before the intervention of the project, many pregnant women used to deliver at homes and experienced either birth complications or death, and indicated that with the education they received through the focal group discussions, durbars and dramas, they now give birth at health facilities with skilled nurses attending to them.

Majority of the women testified that children who were exclusively breastfed for six months were healthier than those who do not practise exclusive breastfeeding.

The Assemblyman for the Yaka electoral area, Mr Nsobilla Andrews Adindaa praised the sponsors of the project and added that before the intervention, many households in the area used to mix concoctions and forced babies to drink in the name of tradition, and said such practices had stopped and led to increase in demand for health care delivery by women at the health facilities.

Chief Issah Ibrahim, The Executive Director of INTYON, thanked UNICEF and the donor for supporting the NGO to empower the project communities to engage in community mobilisation, advocacy and sensitisation programmes targeting traditional rulers, mothers of new born babies, pregnant women, husbands, mothers-in-law, community and religious leaders to ensure that the project succeeded.

Dr Wobil commended the community members for embracing the concept and urged them to become ambassadors in their communities.

The Health and Nutrition Specialist, in response to some of the challenges the women faced including long distances to the health facilities, urged them to advocate and initiate projects on their own to attract development partners to support.