He made the call when he addressed a two-day annual inter-regional stakeholders review meeting on newborn care in Bolgatanga on the theme: “Quality Care for our Babies: A solution for every Newborn Everywhere.”

The meeting was to review their plans and share ideas on best practices.

Dr Issah said health professionals could give the technical advice but the communities had to modify their cultural practices towards newborn care.He urged participants to bring to bear the needs of community members within their catchment areas, and insisted that all the cultural practices that acted as barriers to newborn care and its quality should be dealt through stakeholder meetings.

He entreated the District Health Directors in the three regions to ensure that the issues discussed were disseminated to community members since they played a critical role in the healthcare delivery.

Dr Issah urged the various Regional and District Health Directorates to emulate the good practices of others to improve the quality of care they rendered to mothers and their newborns.

Touching on the role of various health projects, he said it was wealth investing in health projects in the three regions of the north since such investments produced results and called on the three regions to sustain all projects.

“We should be able to make sure that we act as centres of excellence,” he added.

 Mr Rockson Ayine Bukari, the Upper East Regional Minister, noted that quality improvement was key to the survival and development of newborn babies and called on them to work as a team to achieve efficiency and effectiveness in service delivery.

He said government would increase the coverage of antenatal care services and delivery, and would fully immunize children across the country.“We have also made a commitment to construct new health facilities and partner the private sector to augment the provision of healthcare infrastructure”, he said.

The regional Minister assured them of government’s commitment to fully implementing the National Newborn Strategy and Action Plan (2014 to 2018) and the new Healthcare Strategy, which would ensure adequate resources availability.