By Yunus S Saliu
The Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education dissemination meeting with community based committee (CBC) on comprehensive health education (CHE) Monday commenced in Kanifing Municipal Council.
The weeklong dissemination meeting holding at KMC hall in Buffer Zone is under the project titled – Strengthening Access to Quality Comprehensive Health Education in The Gambia, It is an implementation research project done by Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education and funded by International Development Research Center (IDRC), Canada.
The forum brought together different stakeholders from different communities across the municipality which include religious leaders, alkalos, counselors across Kanifing Municipal Council, representatives from Society for the Study of Women’s Health (SSWH), Population Development Advocacy Group (PDAG), Curriculum Research, Evaluation and Development Directorate (CREDD) of Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education (MoBSE), people from different communities across KMC among others.
Dr Mat Lowe made a comprehensive presentation of the comprehensive health education (CHE) in local and English languages for better understanding of everyone.
He said some of the challenges to implementation of the CHE for adolescents in and out-of-school as discovered during the research.
Among other related challenges, he pointed out, are limited stakeholder participation in curriculum development; inadequate adaption and monitoring and supervision of eisting frameworks on comprehensive health education and limited teacher trainings on sexual and reproductive health issues.
Dr Lowe added that reproductive health issues were perceived as major challenges to implementing comprehensive health education for adolescents in school.
Karamo Ceesay, Counsellor of Tallinding Ward, Kanifing Municipal Council encouraged participants to relay the good knowledge and information gathered from the weeklong forum to their people so everyone can know what the comprehensive health education is.
The Counselor pointed out that recently there are lots of issues of early marriages, teenage pregnancies most especially common among the school going children, “but with support from MoBSE and its research team, there is believe that the issues will reduce to zero level in Kanifing Municipality,” Counsellor Ceesay expressed.
Answering questions from the participants, Mrs Phebian Ina Grant-Sagnia, principal investigator of the project for Strengthening Access to Quality Comprehensive Health Education for in-and-out of School Adolescents in Region I, The Gambia who is also a Principal Health Researcher Ministry of Health dilated on the expected outcome of the meetings in The Gambia.
According to her, among the expected outcome are identification of the challenges to implementation of comprehensive health education and institutionalization of relevant school and community-based programs that can be used to strengthen access to quality comprehensive health education, information, and services for both in and out of school adolescents.
The interactive forum started Monday, 1st March in KMC will end Friday, 5th March, 2021.
