Early Termination of Child Welfare Clinic (CWC) Attendance, the Case of Dungu Community, Tamale, Ghana

Abstract

In 2018, an estimated 6.2 million children and adolescents under the age of 15 years died, mostly from preventable causes. 5.3 million of these deaths occurred in the first five years of life. More than half of these early child deaths are preventable or can be treated with simple affordable interventions including childhood immunizations. Studies have found that, termination of child welfare services has been a major challenge to combating under-five mortality all over Africa, including Ghana. This study was conducted to assess the prevalence of Child Welfare Clinic (CWC) termination in the Dungu community, a suburb of Tamale, the northern regional capital. The objectives of the study were to assess mother's knowledge on CWC attendance in the Dungu community, assess the prevalence of early termination of CWC attendance in the Dungu community, to ascertain the reasons for early termination of CWC attendance among mothers/ caregivers in the Dungu community and to find out the effects of child spacing on CWC attendance in the Dungu community. The study found that, termination of child welfare services is prevalent in the dungu community as it is in many parts of Ghana and Africa. Majority of the mothers were found to terminate after two years of patronizing services, when the scheduled immunization is completed. Several reasons were attributed to the termination of service attendance, some which include; attitude of service providers, few working days of CWC facilities, spacing of children and financial challenges (which was found to be the major reason for termination). Some recommendations proposed by the study includes; child welfare clinics should be operational on each working day of the week in the Dungu community, service providers should intensify public education on child welfare services in the Dungu community as well as during child welfare services. Immunizations should be spaced out to cover the entire five years if possible, this will encourage the mothers to patronize the service till the mandated five years as most of the mothers tend to terminate after the immunization schedule is completed.