Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Bold plans to provide affordable family planning

Thursday, March 20, 2008 (The Mirror Pg 25)
By Rebecca Kwei
In a bid to provide quality and affordable family planning and sexual and reproductive health services, a social franchising project, known as Bluestar Healthcare Network, has been launched in Accra.
The network, a project of Marie Stopes International, a non-profit sexual and reproductive health organisation, will engage private health providers to contribute to the reduction of maternal mortality and morbidity by increasing access and utilisation of quality family planning services.
The private health providers include doctors, midwives, pharmacists and chemical sellers.
Speaking on behalf of the Minister of Women and Children’s Affairs, Hajia Alima Mahama, the National Co-ordinator for Early Childhood Development at the ministry, Mrs Ruth Addison, said it was important to have inter-agency collaboration and co-ordination in order to drive important agendas such as sexual and reproductive health.
The ministry, she said, was, therefore, happy with the involvement of the private sector in such an emerging issue, since it would go a long way to complement government’s efforts.
Reiterating the impact and importance of networks, she said they provided a platform for knowledge, best practices and experience sharing.
Additionally, networks served as useful entry points for the dissemination of information and the capacity building of members, she noted.
She said the issue of the survival of women and children was directly linked to their sexual and reproductive health and that “the provision of quality and adequate sexual and reproductive healthcare services will enhance the chances of survival for women and children who form the majority of the country’s population and the human resource production and development base”.
Hajia Mahama urged the network to foster good relationships with district assemblies and governmental agencies at the district and community levels, as well as traditional authorities, for the success of the project.
The Country Director of Marie Stopes International, Ghana (MSIG), Mr Ebenezer Aryee, said the organisation recognised the need to expand access to reproductive health services in the country, especially to the large group of communities which, for many reasons, remained under-served and were, therefore, vulnerable to maternal mortality and morbidity.
He said one proven approach the MSG had adopted in executing that mission was the social franchise network,
explaining that in social franchising, “we enter into partnership with these private providers and support them to be able to deliver services and information to Marie Stopes specifications”.
That partnership, he noted, was intended to bring reproductive health services and information right to the doorstep of those who need it.
Mrs Doris Attafua of Vicdoris Pharmaceuticals, a franchisee, said the lack of knowledge and available safe centres for sexual reproductive health education was making innocent victim prey to all kinds of ill advice, pressure and danger, adding, “Thanks to Bluestar, this information is right now with us in our very communities.”
She said the Bluestar training had helped the franchisees to be better informed in the laws and protocols of family planning and safe abortion care in Ghana and that they knew what their roles as pharmacists and chemical sellers were in providing sexual and reproductive health care according to the Ghana Health Services policies and protocols.
According to the Bluestar Manager, Ms Senanu Arkutu, as of now the network had 92 franchisees in Accra and Tema, comprising 30 chemical shops, 25 pharmacies and 37 clinics.
Between October and December 2007, 15 franchisees provided 31,388 clients with family planning products and services and 400 clients with long-term family planning methods.

Elivava — Out of the shadows

Thursday, March 20, 2008 (The Mirror Pg. 3)
By Rebecca Kwei
Elivava. The name may not ring a bell if you are not a keen follower of music in this country. But to music industry insiders, she is the soulful, charming singer who had been there to back nearly all the top acts in this country until a couple of months ago.
She has now taken ‘centre stage’ with the completion’ of her debut, an album aptly titled Elivava ( I live forever) and she is more than glad that her days as a backing singer are over.
“As an apprentice, you must graduate at some stage and be on your own. I have discovered what style of music appeals to me and how to approach it my way,” Elivava (real name Tina Mensah Gbevi) said in an interview with The Mirror.
Tracing her steps in the music industry, Elivava said as it was with most musicians, she started singing in the church. After recording an album with the Sanctuary Choir in the early 1990s as one of the group’s lead vocalists, the studio engineer commented on her good voice and encouraged her to come to the studio from time to time to be used as a backing singer.
She did that, met a lot of artistes at the studio and did some backing vocals. But she took a break in 1995, though she continued to sing at church.
Her interest in studio work was whipped up again by a cousin of hers who introduced her to Ekow Micah. She backed him on a recording and went on to sing for a legion of Ghanaian artistes, including Amandzeba, Afro Moses, Rex Omar, Sidney, Samini, VIP, Atongo, Kojo Antwi and Ekow Alabi.
During her studio gigs, she met a jazz pianist, composer and arranger called Charles Duwor (popularly known as Fafa) who encouraged her to take interest in jazz music.
In the course of immersing herself in jazz, she undertook thorough vocal exercises and how to be on her own as an artiste.
Elivava collaborated with Charles to come out with an 18-track African jazz album and they also performed in jazz clubs across the country.
“After doing backing vocals for some time, I thought to myself that I could not go on doing that all my life. I needed to move on from there because I can write songs and sing well,” she stated.
Elivava set herself a task to write enough good material to fill an album and the result is her maiden collection.
“Whenever I sleep, I wake up with a new song. So I love sleeping,” she said.
According to Elivava, it took five years to come out with the album because “I had to research and come out like myself, not like any other person. I believe if you are convinced enough to do something, you must strive to bring some striking difference to it,” she noted.
The self-titled album contains 10 songs, eight of which she wrote herself. The titles are: ‘Welcome to Elivava’, ‘Save Them’, ‘Love of a Woman’, ‘One Nation’ and ‘What will be will be’, which happens to be Elivava’s favourite.
The other songs are ‘Ce Pa Ca’, ‘Kobla’, ‘Bumi’, ‘Yiko’ and ‘Goodbye But Not Forever’.
The songs are contemporary African music fused with Western style, for Elivava describes her music as having a ‘world music approach’.
Explaining, she said, “Music is my passion. It is what I love to do but it is business at the same time. When I do Ghanaian music, I would also want it to be pleasant to other ears so that people of different nationalities who hear it will like it and go for it.”
She said she would like to portray Ghanaian music in a way that would make it have an impact on the international scene.
A native of New Baika in the Buem District of the Volta Region, Elivava’s parents are Matthew Gbevi and Beatrice Agbontor.
As a child, she did not picture herself becoming an artiste.
“I was more into collecting pieces of cloths from dressmakers and cutting them up to sew my own fanciful things. I also loved making dolls. My parents thought I’d be a fashion designer,” she recalled.
All that has changed now and she says, “My album is a gift to Ghanaians and all musicians. To all those I have backed, I want them to know it was a privilege and to thank them for the learning process.”
The album will be launched next month. Elivava intends to tour Africa and other parts of the world after the launch to show Ghanaian culture in a different light. She is very confident that her performances will leave positive impressions in the hearts of her audience.

Monday, March 17, 2008

Partnership on gender equality launched

Saturday, March 15, 2008 (The Mirror Pg 15)
By Rebecca Kwei
The Chief Advisor to the President, Mrs Mary Chinery-Hesse, has called on the Ghana Statistical Service to improve the availability and quality of statistical data disaggregated along gender lines.
That, she said, would allow for a systematic study of gender differentials and gender issues.
She said the collection and dissemination of statistical information in respect of gender issues was critical to planning and evaluation, adding that such information was only meaningful when it was disaggregated by gender.
Mrs Chinery-Hesse made the call at launch of the EC/UN Partnership on Gender Equality for Development and Peace which was held in Accra.
The project is an initiative that involves the European Commission (EC), the United Nations Fund for Women (UNIFEM) and the International Training Centre of the International Labour Organisation (ITC/ILO).
The EC/UN partnership aims at identifying approaches with which to integrate gender equality and women's human rights into new aid modalities, in accordance with the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness.
Additionally, it will also provide support for national partners' efforts to fulfil international obligations on gender equality and to match their commitments to gender equality with adequate financial allocations in national development programmes and budgets.
Mrs Chinery-Hesse noted that a comprehensive approach to data collection was crucial to development, since it was the surest way to systematically obtain useful information for the formulation of people-centred, gender-sensitive public policy.
Apart from the launch, the day was also used to commence a National Consultation on the Mapping Study on Aid Effectiveness and Gender Equality in Ghana as part of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness which was adopted in March 2005.
The commitments of the declaration are ownership, alignment, harmonisation, managing for development results and mutual accountability.
Mrs Chinery-Hesse was hopeful that "the gender mapping project will provide policy makers with sufficient baseline information to enable them to institute appropriate changes to policies in order to address the special concerns of women".
In her presentation on the EC/UN partnership, the National Programme Co-ordinator of UNIFEM, Ms Afua Ansre, said the project would focus on 12 pilot countries, namely, Ghana, Cameroun, Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Papua New Guinea and Indonesia.
The rest are Nepal, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine, Nicaragua, Honduras and Surinam.
She said there were five strategies — knowledge generation, capacity building, information sharing, advocacy and partnership building — which the project would focus on and that at the national level there would be close collaboration with government departments, national institutions for women and gender equality, women's NGOs and networks, civil society, among others.
Ms Ansre said the project would ensure "increased visibility of gender equality and its acknowledgement as a key development objective within the framework of the aid effectiveness agenda".
The Head of the EC Delegation in Ghana, Mr Filiberto Ceriani Sebregondi, said gender equality was essential for growth and poverty reduction and was key to reaching the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
However, he said gender inequalities were still ingrained in the cultural, social and political systems of many countries.
Mr Sebregondi said gender equality was one of the five common principles of EU development co-operation and that the EC was investing in the project because "we believe that investments in gender equality are fundamental to the effectiveness of development assistance".
The Minister of Women and Children's Affairs, Hajia Alima Mahama, who chaired the launch, stressed that the government was committed to addressing gender equality and had, among other things, demonstrated that further by coming out with modalities for gender budgeting, starting with the ministries of Agriculture, Health and Education.

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Ayekoo to all women

Saturday, March 8, 2008 (The Mirror Pg 32)

By Rebecca Kwei
Today, March 8, marks International Women’s Day (IWD), a very special day to celebrate women and their social, economic and political achievements.
The idea of an IWD first came up at the beginning of the 1900s in America and Europe when women in many countries neither had the vote nor the right to join a union.
Now IWD has grown to become a global day of recognition celebrated world-wide by women’s groups and governments. This year’s global theme is, “Shaping Progress”, while the local theme is,
The Ministry of Women and Children’s Affairs, in collaboration with a some NGOs, will organise various activities to mark the day.
Over the years, significant strides have been made in the social, economic, political and health status of women in Ghana.
The establishment of the Ministry of Women and Children’s Affairs was a boost for women, since there is now an institution to deal with women’s welfare.
The Domestic Violence Law marked another milestone in the country’s commitment to the rights of women. There are ongoing processes to put in place policies and programmes and legal frameworks to protect women and children from sexual exploitation and abuse, harmful cultural practices, trafficking and property rights.
Most women are breadwinners of their families and certain social protection measures, such as the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), the Capitation Grant, the School Feeding Programme, mass transportation, free bus ride for schoolchildren and micro-credit for women and people with disabilities (PWDs), have, in a way, bettered their situation. Hopefully, the soon-to-be-introduced Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) programme which involves direct cash transfers to categories of poor people will assist poor women to take care of their families, as well as help them to venture into areas that will bring them sustainable incomes.
The contribution of women to the country’s economy has been tremendous. Most Ghanaian women work in the informal sector. It is estimated that women make up about 85 per cent of the wholesale and retail trading business and form about two-thirds of the working population in the manufacturing sector.
Despite challenges such as access to land, non accessibility to credit facilities (especially at reasonable interest rate) and the perception that women’s businesses should not be as large or successful as that of men, hundreds of women have braved the odds and predominate from small-scale businesses to big enterprises, recording sterling performances.
Maternal mortality, sad to note, is still an issue. The World Health Organisation says 740 women die out of every 100,000 live births. It is important to tackle maternal health seriously, since the maternal mortality rate of a country is an international indicator for measuring the quality of health.
The number of female parliamentarians has increased steadily. In the first Parliament of the Fourth Republic, 16 women were elected as MPs, while in 1996 18 out of the 53 women contestants were elected. In 2000, 19 out of the 95 female contestants were elected, while in 2004, 25 out of the 104 contestants were elected. Also worthy of mention is that now there are more female ministers, deputy ministers, chief directors and members of boards than in the past.
Ghanaian women are blazing the trail in all spheres of life. A few are Mrs Akua Kuenyehia, the first Vice-President of the International Criminal Court; Mrs Georgina Theodora Wood, the first female Chief Justice; Mrs Henrietta Mensa-Bonsu, the Deputy Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General in Liberia for the Rule of Law; Mrs Betty Mould Iddrisu, Director of the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Division of the Commonwealth Secretariat, London; Ms Elizabeth Adjei, the Director of the Ghana Immigration Service; Mrs Elizabeth Mills-Robertson, a Deputy Inspector-General of Police; Ms Anna Bossman, the acting Chairperson of the Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice; Mrs Gifty Affenyi-Dadzie, a member of the Council of State; Mrs Elizabeth Villars, the MD of Camelot Ghana Limited, and Mrs Cecilia Kwofie, Executive Director, DOMOD Aluminium Limited.
This year being an election year, one issue that has engaged the attention of many gender activists is that political parties should choose women as running mates.
They maintain that that will be a big step towards improving the status of women.
Mrs Mould-Iddrisu, who people are championing to be selected as the running mate to the National Democratic Congress (NDC) flag bearer, in an interview with the Daily Graphic, said that Ghana was ready for a woman President.
She argued that after 50 years of independence, Ghana was ready to have competent women occupy non-traditional, high-level positions, including the presidency.
“The men say they understand our problems but they cannot because only women understand women’s issues,” she stated.
As we celebrate women today, it is important for the government to re-commit itself to addressing the social, health, economic and political issues that serve as barriers to the advancement of women.
It is also important to initiate programmes and policies for more women to get into the decision-making process so that women’s specific interests are taken into account when important decisions are being made.

Know facts of stigmatisation

Saturday, March 8, 2008 (The Mirror Pg 38)
By Rebecca Kwei
The Presidential Advisor on Reproductive Health and HIV & AIDS, Professor Fred T. Sai, has said it is important for social scientists to know the facts of stigmatisation and discrimination of people living with HIV and AIDS.
“That a disease which results from an accepted human behaviour is so stigmatised is strange to some of us who have observed behaviour and STIs in Ghana for a long time”, he said.
Prof. Sai was speaking at the opening ceremony of the 2nd National HIV & AIDS Research Conference (NHARCON) in Accra.
The three-day conference which had the theme, “Sustaining the Comprehensive National Response to HIV” brought together researchers, programme managers, policy makers and other stakeholders to discuss research findings on various aspects of the HIV and AIDS epidemic in the country.
Prof. Sai said research was critical to finding the causes of diseases, cure, prevention and how to apply these and that without research, the country would be unable to continue to developing scientific and evidence-based preventive methodologies and safe and user-friendly treatments.
“For true progress, basic science and clinical researches have to be combined with serious social science research for programme development”, he noted.
He said reasons for high feminisation of the disease, the vulnerability of youth and the interaction of the virus and treatment with the “internal nutritional and pathologic environments of our populations” were of great urgency to programmes in Ghana.
Other reasons Prof. Sai suggested for both social and basic research were traditional medicine and resource mobilisation and allocation.
On the issue of reporting scientific findings and the need for the media to be objective, he noted that it would be helpful for scientists to be more directly involved in passing knowledge on to the population, adding that “the health of the people cannot be improved without the full and well-informed involvement of the media on a continuous basis.”
The Director-General of the Ghana AIDS Commission, Prof. Sakyi Awuku Amoa, said the 2007 HIV Sentinel Survey Report indicated that the national prevalence rate declined from 2.22 per cent in 2006 to 1.9 per cent in 2007.
He said this was a significant indication that the epidemic was stabilising in Ghana and added that Ghana had adopted a multi-sectoral approach as the most effective strategy to deal with the epidemic.
“The National Strategic Framework 2006-2010 that underlies the approach recognises the epidemic as a socio-economic development challenge and, therefore, incorporates strategies for dealing with its complex dimensions,” he said.
On research, he said, it had also been identified as a key intervention in the National Strategic Framework and as a tool for designing an evidence-based national response.
“Whether Ghana will remain a generalised epidemic country indefinitely or achieve a lower prevalence by preventing large numbers of new infections in the future will largely depend on knowledge among the populace of factors that contribute to the spread of the epidemic,” he added.
For his part, the UN Resident Coordinator, Mr Dauda Toure, urged participants to use the conference as an opportunity to review collective national efforts and to set the agenda for the future by sharing scientific evidence, lessons learnt and best practices with a view to devising ways of sustaining a comprehensive national response.
The Chairperson for the National Population Council, Mrs Virginia Ofosu-Amaah, who chaired the ceremony, said the country should not rest on its laurels because the national HIV prevalence declined from 2.22 per cent in 2006 to 1.9 per cent in 2007 but rather, there was more to do in terms of prevention, care and support.
She said lessons learnt at the conference should be widely disseminated at all levels to improve the national response to HIV and AIDS.