Ghana Education Services Launches Shep Dissemination and Policy Guidelines

Ghana Education Services

Health is a fundamental human right and a sound social investment, Mad. Kate Opoku, Director of the School Health Education Programme (SHEP), has noted.

Mad. Opoku explained that currently, health was viewed holistically as a positive state and an essential commodity which people needed in order to lead socially and economically productive lives.

Health promotion in schools, she said, should, therefore, not only be concerned with the management and prevention of disease, but the active pursuit of mental, physical and social well-being. "For health to be preventive rather than curative, the need for the promotion of healthy life styles and practices cannot be over emphasized, especially in school-age children in their formative years of development," she said. Mad. Opoku, who was speaking at launch of the SHEP dissemination policy guidelines in Accra, disclosed that the Ministry of Education, in collaboration with the Ghana Health service and relevant stakeholders were implementing the SHEP in Ghana.

She said the SHEP policy guideline would provide a holistic approach to the implementation of interventions and define linkages with other national programmes and goals.

This, she said, would bring together the various stakeholders and individuals who offered school health services and provided the institutional framework within which they undertook their roles and responsibilities.

Furthermore, according to Mad. Opoku, the policy guideline would also provide a new direction for achieving effective school health delivery-- a critical condition for achieving the goals of education in Ghana.

For his part, the Director in charge of the Basic Education Division of GES, Mr Stephen Adu, said the GES would assume ultimate responsibility for the implementation of SHEP.

Mr Adu said the GES would establish a unit within the GES Administrative structure called the SHEP unit to implement the programme, deploy relevant infrastructure and logistics for its implementation and provide a secretariat, regular personnel and resources for its general co-ordination and monitoring.