The review session is also to afford the health workers and the directorate the opportunity to assess their challenges and come up with solutions to deal with them.

In a key-note address at the Tema General Hospital on Wednesday, the Metropolitan Health Director of Tema, Dr. John Yabani, said, “The year has been a difficult one because there were issues of funding and data entering, and other programmes took us away especially national programmes like measles and yellow fever immunization.”

Dr. Yabani observed that since quality data was necessary in the administration of health, the directorate improved upon data quality by training “our heads of health facilities in the Metropolis and creating the opportunity for them to be looking at the data and monitoring how it is entered into the data base.”

He said the directorate ensured that all CHPS compounds were equipped so they could function optimally whilst they enjoyed continues supervision at the sub-metro and the metro levels.

The Director said their agenda in the passing year was also to engage the private sector so they submitted returns regularly to the sub-metros to be entered into the data base for the whole picture of health delivery in the Metropolis to be monitored.

He added that, “The purposed was to strengthen the health service with constant meetings and ensure that governance is in place and running properly whilst we strengthened our research base.”

Dr. Yabani said some of the key challenges in the Metropolis for the year under review were high maternal death and low immunization coverage.

He also informed of huge challenges that were posed by dealing with the adolescents in the Metropolis, and the transportation problems they had to contend with.

Some of the health facilities that made presentation  on the first day of the session included Tema East Sub-metro, Tema Manhean Health Centre, Tema Polyclinic and Birth and Death Registry.