DON'T ENDANGER HEALTH OF UNBORN BABIES (PAGE 29)

Expectant mothers have been urged to avoid acts that would result in congenital malformations and mental or physical challenges in their children.
The head teacher of the Twin-City Special School in Sekondi, Mrs Elizabeth Amewowor, who made the call, said even though there were many factors that resulted in mental retardation among innocent children, majority of them were preventable if society and expectant mothers took the advice of doctors during their ante-natal and postnatal clinical attendances.
She said society should not forget that even after birth the child was still vulnerable to mental retardation until he or she crossed the 18th year.
“What society fails to understand is that, aside attempted crude abortions, exposure of pregnant women to second-hand smoking, alcoholism, exposure to lead, radiation from the television, manhandling of one’s self during pregnancy, eating from newspapers are all contributing factors to mental retardation in children,” he explained.
Mrs Amewowor was addressing national service persons serving with the Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority (GPHA) in Takoradi, after they had donated cash and some items to the school.
The items donated to the school included toilet soaps, cartons of cooking oil, detergents, canned tomato, packs of Toilet rolls, bars of soap and some cookies.
She said the most serious factors among them was threatened abortion, especially when young women attempted but failed to abort pregnancies and later decided to give birth.
“If you attempt aborting a pregnancy and fail, you have in one way or the other caused some damage to the unborn baby. Do not think that everything is alright when the abortion fails because then when the child arrives he or she is mentally retarded,” she said.
Mrs Ameworwor said there was an increasing demand by parents to obtain admission for their children at the special school, which currently had a population of 115 children but the limitations in infrastructure made it impossible for them to increase admissions.
She expressed worry that the school authorities did not have the chance to meet the larger members of the society to educate them.
Mrs Ameworwor said extensive research had shown that the state of the unfortunate children could largely be attributed to traditional beliefs, but together Ghanaians could work to reduce them.
She called on non-governmental organisations, corporate and other members of society to help extend a helping hand to the vulnerable and less privileged in society, since the government alone could not fully provide their needs, and thanked the service persons for their support.
The headteacher said their biggest problem was lack of adequate classrooms and residential facilities, and appealed for support to expand them.
For his part, the President of the GPHA National Service Personnel Association, Mr E. Kofi Parker, said the donation was part of their social responsibility, and that there was nothing more heartwarming than lending a helping hand to the needy.