It involves the Ghana Education Service School Health Education Programme (GES/SHEP), the Veterinary Services Department and a non-governmental organisation, Communication Initiatives for Change (CIC-Ghana), with sponsorship from a pharmaceutical company, Boehringer Ingelheim (BI).

The Executive Director of CIC-Ghana, Emmanuel Fiagbey, who made it known in a statement, said “Children love dogs and cats and they are often the ones who interact closely with these pet animals.

“Unfortunately, children of school-going age in Ghana are the ones who suffer most from the bites of these usually friendly animals and the resultant rabies disease.

“This surely is a critical situation requiring a fast and effective solution to save the lives of school-going children.”

Mr Fiagbey said the unique partnership was, therefore, formed to help deal with the situation starting from the Greater Accra Region and to be extended across the country soon. 

Prevention campaign

To this end, a campaign dubbed “Basic Schools Rabies Prevention Education in the Greater Accra Region” aimed at improving awareness and knowledge among schoolchildren, teachers, parents and other stakeholders within the school environment in basic schools in the region has begun.

The statement said the campaign was done through the provision of basic information on the causes of rabies, signs and symptoms, mode of transmission, prevention and proper treatment, and care for dog bites and other exposures.

Commenting on the campaign, which started in January this year, the Greater Accra Regional Director of the GES, Stephen Abamfo, said: “Children love dogs as their pets and when it comes to creating a safe human-animal health environment and protecting the health of our children, educational programmes such as this are immensely important.”

The basic schools’ rabies education campaign, led by field programme operatives of CIC-Ghana, has so far trained a total of 291 District and School Health Education Coordinators, School Improvement Support Officers and head teachers in 10 municipalities and districts in the Greater Accra Region in rabies prevention and effective treatment of dog bites.

Communication and educational materials such as posters, rabies prevention and dog bites treatment guides and flip charts have been provided to the teachers to enable them to integrate appropriate rabies prevention messages in their daily interactions with the schoolchildren.

Dr Emmanuel Pecku, an official of the Veterinary Services Department, is on record to have said in 2022 that about 40 per cent of all rabies cases recorded in Ghana involved children below the age of 14 years.

Also, an earlier six-year investigation by Dr William Tasiame, a researcher, together with others, involving seven regional hospitals ie Central, Greater Accra, Western, Volta, Brong Ahafo, Upper East and Ashanti, revealed that children within zero to 15 years formed the highest number of victims of dog bites in these regions.

Sensitisation action plans

The statement on the planned coverage of the campaign said as part of a training of trainers’ programme, 100 action plans for 100 schools were developed by the School Health Teams to guide rabies prevention in all the schools.

The implementation of these action plans will enable about 45,000 basic schoolchildren in the Greater Accra Region to be reached with messages on rabies prevention and the appropriate ways of treating dog bites.

The Coordinator of the campaign on behalf of all the partners, Vivian Abiwu, in a statement, intimated that by the close of the year, the GES/SHEP, VSD-Ghana, CIC-Ghana and the BI partnership hoped to extend the basic schools rabies prevention education campaign to other regions of Ghana, especially the Volta and Bono regions.

Communication Initiatives for Change (CIC) Ghana is a Ghanaian non-governmental organisation with expertise in social and behavioural change, health and development communication.