Girls Club Annual Leadership Camp 2023
Menstrual Hygiene Day Celebration
LET’S GET MOVING!
Persons disabled or limited in pedal movement or mobility require aids such as wheelchairs or mobile carts to go about their daily activities.
The high cost of wheelchairs coupled with the difficulty in getting a dedicated person to
wheel one around places a huge burden on persons with such challenges. This causes such persons to become dependent on others and in the case of young people affect their education and future productivity.
Women’s Health to Wealth in its quest to support the education of girls to complete at least basic schooling considered the mobility hardships, faced by physically disabled adolescents, and physically disabled women in productive ventures.
To address the undesirable circumstances of such females, Women’s Health to Wealth donated sixteen (16) P.E.T Carts of which, ten are for children and six for adults, to the Department of Social Welfare in the Dormaa East district of the Bono Region on November 8th, 2022.
Photo credit: WHW, Nov. 2022
The ten carts are to be distributed to physically disabled adolescent students primarily adolescent girls to enable them to go to, and from school in a hassle-free manner and physically disabled adult women who are engaged in profitable ventures. The P.E.T. carts provide extra exercise for the upper body as it uses the manual strength of the beneficiary to move the cart.
Presby. Junior High School
Photo Credit: Social Welfare Department Dormaa East, Dec. 2022
Women’s Health to Wealth by this intervention hopes to make our physically disabled girls and women more independent in terms of their mobility and thereby enhance their education and economic activities.
Story by : Yaw Sekeyere Frimpong
Logistics Officer December 20, 2022.
Women’s Health to Wealth’s (WHW) warehouse serves as the place for the storage of shipments of medical supplies from their partner in the United States of America, Americares for free onward distribution to over 100 sub-recipients of the Gift-In-Kind (GIK) program was in a deplorable state. The building had substantial external structural defects and lighting and ventilation issues which affected the means of storing medical supplies, especially those that required cold chain storage. This situation demanded urgent redress.
As part of the current Maternal Newborn and Child Health Intervention Program (MNCHIP) project Women’s Health to Wealth (WHW) upgraded the warehouse by awarding a renovation contract to a local real estate firm. The renovation works started on May 10, 2022, and were fully completed on July 25, 2022. During the renovation works, a ceiling joist and noggin to carry high-quality plastic T&G ceiling with corner moldings were fixed, two (2) Midea 2.5HP standing AC units with their accessories were installed, the access ramp into the warehouse was reconstructed, and lockable glazed windows to control
draft through existing jalousie windows were fixed, a connection of electricity from the power grid-ECG was done as well as the installation of a single phase meter at the warehouse and finally, the interior walls of the warehouse space and the entire exterior walls were repainted using American Acrylic paint (gloss). The renovated warehouse now has lighting, air-conditioning a reconstructed access ramp, and it looks beautifully repainted. Further to the renovation works, six 1000kg shelves were also installed at the warehouse, and also to improve security measures there, a glass security door and metal roller shutter
at the gate have been installed.
Now WHW has an improved warehouse and is putting in additional measures to strengthen its supply chain management in order to continuously provide health facilities with logistical support to improve healthcare delivery.
Story by : Yaw Sekeyere Frimpong
Logistics Officer December 20, 2022.
Client Satisfaction Soars from a Positive Intervention
Cervical cancer is a malignant tumor of the cervix affecting the lower part of the uterus and it is one of the leading causes of death in women. It occurs mostly in women over 30 years. It is a condition that can have no symptoms though some may experience pain in the pelvis, pain during sex, bleeding after sexual intercourse and abnormal bleeding from the vagina.
Management of this condition includes chemotherapy, cryotherapy, surgery such as hysterectomy, cervicectomy and others depending on the stage of the disease.
Over the past three years, 3456 women in the reproductive age in 70 communities spread over seven districts of the Ashanti region were screened by Women’s Health to Health through the mobile clinic program to detect early abnormalities that can lead to cancer of the cervix. The women are screened for this condition by visual inspection of the cervix by applying 5% Acetic Acid (VIA) on the cervix and inspecting for signs of pre-cancerous cells. Women found to be VIA positive were referred to Kumasi South Hospital and Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital for management.
To alleviate the struggle and stress that these women to go through when referred to these facilities for cryotherapy, Women’s Health to Wealth has purchased a Cryotherapy machine to manage women who are VIA positive and require cryotherapy in an efficient stress free manner at an affordable cost. . This service is not limited to referrals from WHW mobile clinics but also to many women who require cryotherapy referred from other from other public facilities.
Indeed, this is has come as a great help to women who previously had to wait out an average of 4 to 6 months to be scheduled for cryotherapy at the Kumasi South Regional Hospital that was the main and cheapest source for this treatment. Clients can now have the treatment provided at suitable cost within 10 days after the diagnosis. The staff of Women’s Health to Wealth and especially clients are thankful to the management for this initiative as it has yielded very positive results in terms of client and job satisfaction.
Story By
Beatrice Nyamekye (Health Coordinator).
SUCCESS STORY: A STITCH IN TIME
Daniel Osei Bonsu is a 14-year-old boy resident of the Wawase in the Afigya Kwabre district of the Ashanti region in Ghana. Daniel, a junior high school student of the local Roman Catholic School registered with the Women’s Health to Wealth (WHW) Boys’ Club program in May 2018. The program trains adolescent boys to attain life skills required for self development and to contribute positively towards the development of their communities.
About a year ago, Daniel got so ill hat he sometimes missed a whole term of school could not participate in the National Juvenile Football Association of which he was a member. After seeking medical help from a local community clinic without any improvement, Daniel’s parents concluded that, the source of his illness was spiritual and started seeking help from local spiritualists.
Daniel’s absence in school and during club sessions was reported to WHW by the club facilitator. A team from WHW visited Daniel at home after he two weeks of absence from club sessions in June 2018 and found him in a critically ill and helpless situation. Despite the fact that his mother was convinced it was a spiritual issue, she was encouraged to send Daniel to the WHW hospital in Kumasi. Daniel was found to be severely anaemic and required urgent blood transfusion. He was referred to and admitted at the emergency unit the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) where he was transfused with three pints of blood and later hooked onto a ventilator. Sadly, Daniel was unable to make it and passed on seventeen days after intensive care at KATH.
Daniel was diagnosed as having a congenital malignant blood disease that usually affect other siblings. This disorder occurs in people with a compromised immune system and in persons that have a family history of having this malignant disease. It was evident Daniel received late treatment for this disease because parents and his community attributed his sickness to work of demons in the spirit world.
With this knowledge of the cause of Daniel’s ailment and the fact that this disease is genetically transferrable, his parents were urged after being educated on the nature of the illness to send his four other siblings for testing. As the saying goes, “A stitch in time saves nine”– even though we lost Daniel, we have had the opportunity to save his four other siblings through early detection and appropriate treatment for two others who also have the same problem.
Fig. 1. Group discussion among boys during a Boys’ Club session.
Report by:
Deborah Mensah Duah.