Tema: The Tema Metropolitan Health Directorate has launched the 2025 African Vaccination and Child Health Promotion Week Celebration with a call on parents and caregivers to follow health professionals' advice for their children's well-being.

According to Ghana News Agency, the health week, themed 'Every Child Deserves a Healthy Future: Invest in Your Child. Attend Weighing Regularly,' will feature child health promotional activities, including vaccinations, vitamin A supplementation, birth registration, growth monitoring, and promotion.

Caregivers who participated in the program shared the valuable health lessons they learned from attending the child welfare clinics and urged their peers to heed the advice of health officials. They highlighted the benefits of exclusive breastfeeding for boosting their children's immune systems and emphasized the importance of sleeping under treated insecticide nets during pregnancy and after delivery.

Mr. Daniel Idan, a father, encouraged men to support their lactating wives post-delivery, explaining that leaving childcare responsibilities solely to mothers could negatively impact both maternal and child health. He shared his personal practice of accompanying his wife to the weighing center for vaccinations and other care, and he appealed to institutions to facilitate fathers' involvement in such activities.

The launch event included health officials educating caregivers and mothers on jaundice and nutrition, with a role play on childhood immunizations and the importance of attending child welfare clinics. Ms. Gifty Essel, the nutrition officer for the Tema Health Centre, advised caregivers to provide children aged six months and above with family food as part of their complementary feeding. She emphasized that these foods should not be replaced with commercially produced supplementary foods.

Ms. Essel also warned against giving children fizzy drinks and sugars, suggesting that blended foods could be added to porridge to sweeten children's meals. She encouraged caregivers to mix children's food with fish powder, plant-based proteins like beans, eggs, and meat stock to ensure they receive essential nutrients, while feeding them items from all the four-star diet groups.