The Ghana Health Service (GHS) has implored parents to endeavour to provide their adolescent girls meals with rich nutritional value to protect them against anaemia and build their body systems.

According to Dr Prince Quarshie, the Deputy Director, Public Health, Bono Regional Health

Directorate, adolescent girls needed high nutrition to build their body system, cognitive and mental faculty, emotional balance.
Intake of the Folic Acid Tablet minimize pregnancy related complications, fight menstrual disorders and thereby improve child bearing, as well as enhance the learning faculty of adolescent girls, he said.

Dr Quarshie gave the advice at a symposium on the implementation of the Girls Iron Folic Acid Tablet (GIFT) supplementation  programme in Sunyani, organised by the Nitrition Unit of the Bono Regional Health Directorate for selected school girls and teachers in the region.

He said statistics showed that 48 percent of girls between 15 and 19 years in the country suffered from anaemia, and mentioned menstruation, rapid body growth and expansion and poor meals as some major factors contributing to anaemia among girls in the country.

Dr Quarhie regretted that anaemia was contributing to high school dropouts among girls in the country, and saying anaemia was responsible for low birth rate, child birth complications, and pre-mature babies.

He said the implementation of the GIFT programme, being funded by the UNICEF and other partners,  had been rolled out in 650, hoping to cover all the 750 basic schools in the region.
Dr Kofi Amo-Kodieh, the Bono Regional Director of Health, said 70 percent of children below five years were anaemic, saying Ghana had 66 percent of anaemia among the adolescence.