By Kebba AF Touray
The Director General of West Africa Health Organization (WAHO) has informed members of the ECOWAS Parliament’s joint committee that his organization has screened over 16 thousand women for breast and cervical cancer.
The WAHO DG said this while presenting a paper during the de-localized meeting of the joint committees in Guinea Conakry on: “Status of the implementation of health education policies in the ECOWAS region: Role of the ECOWAS Parliament.”
The meeting is being held by the Community Parliament’s joint committee on Health, Education, Science and Culture, Telecommunications and Information Technology and Industry and Private Sector, with the overall objective of raising awareness among MPs on health care services and education, to enable them to contribute significantly to the promotion of health policies in ECOWAS member States.
“Health education aims to promote the acquisition of knowledge and skills by the population to foster behavioral change. It aims to ensure health-promoting behaviors, community ownership of health programs, and a reduction in health risk behaviors,” he said. WAHO, he said, incorporates health education into all its programs such as reproductive health and nutrition, HIV/ AIDS, non-communicable diseases (Diabetes, Hypertension, Mental Health), communicable diseases (Malaria, Tuberculosis, Hepatitis), and epidemic-prone diseases (mpox, COVID, etc).
Under the Regional Reproductive Health and HIV Prevention project, DG Aissi said WAHO provided financial support to Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Togo, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea-Bissau, The Gambia and Niger in 2023.
“This has resulted in the implementation of 125 sub-projects centered on activities aimed at creating demand for family planning, education of the girl-child and ensuring the continuation of studies and improved delivery of sexual and reproductive health services,” he said. He reported that the examples of health education activities carried out by WAHO include 13,372 women screened in Benin for breast cancer; 3,201 women screened and treated for cervical cancer, and 18,190 children administered with vitamin A. He said the activities carried out also include community-based distribution of contraceptives in Burkina Faso and cross-border social mobilization campaigns for reproductive health in Togo. He said the types of health education strategies, include but are not limited to behavioral change communication, risk communication and community engagement, social mobilization, and advocacy for the adoption of health-promotion policies, and increased funding for healthcare. He outlined that the initiatives taken in collaboration with the ECOWAS Parliament include the promotion of health education including the enactment and adoption of the law on HIV/AIDS, the demographic dividend, and health financing. He highlighted that the lessons learned from collaborating with the ECOWAS Parliament include the adoption of the law on HIV/AIDS in almost all countries, greater commitment on the part of decision-makers on the demographic dividend, and greater awareness among the population of the importance of fertility control.
“The lessons also include improved internal financing in certain countries. Greater community involvement in the fight against malaria and epidemics as a whole, increase the percentage of the national budget for health, and greater visibility of WAHO’s activities in these countries,” he added.
He said the roles of the ECOWAS Parliament in the implementation of health education policies include advocacy for health-promotion policies and ensuring that the community budget is allocated to healthcare in line with the commitments made in the Abuja Declaration.
He continued to say that the parliament’s role is also to work towards the involvement of all stakeholders (politicians, the general public, civil society, the private sector, etc.) to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.
