DG urges assemblies to complement healthcare delivery

Dr Ebenezer Appiah-Denkyirah, the Director General of Ghana Health Service (GHS), said community healthcare delivery required the full complements of metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies (MMDAs) to achieve quality healthcare for all.

He said Community Health Organizations (CHOs) were necessary in the sub-district structures and, therefore, the need for MMDAs to work closely with them to identify shortcomings and other ways of improving health challenges in communities.

He urged the assemblies to do so by establishing links with the health providers in their communities to enhance contacts and make it easy for people to seek medical attention even when at home.

Dr Appiah-Denkyirah was in Bolgatanga on Friday to participate in the mid-year review of the Upper East Regional Health Directorate, on the theme: “Implementation of Adolescent Health Services: The Role of the Community.”

He said the occasion accorded him the opportunity to look at the performance of the directorate and identify gaps in health service delivery that would enable the GHS to map out strategies for improved health care delivery in the country.

Whilst congratulating the Regional Health Directorate for the strides achieved in preventive health intervention models and the Community Health Preventive Services (CHPS), he urged the metropolitan, municipal and district chief executives (MMDCEs) to show interest in the outcome of the CHPS and the performance of district health institutions, especially health score cards of districts to know the health gaps to help health workers to be more effective.

Dr Appiah-Denkyira said for CHPS to be effective, MMDCEs had to commit themselves to building more of the compounds so as to increase people’s access to healthcare and called on Members of Parliament (MPs) to give the needed support especially motorbikes to community health workers to perform their duties.

He outlined a number of plans his outfit was putting in place to improve health service and indicated that plans were also underway to reduce the voluminous paper records by using the electronic data system.

Dr Koku Awoonor-Williams, Upper East Regional Director of Health Services, who outlined a number of successes chalked by the directorate, indicated that malaria fatality rates for children under-five reduced from1.5 in 2010 to 0.3 in the year under review.

He said malaria prevalence rate of 44 per cent recorded in 2011, reduced to 11.7 per cent in a spate of four years.

Dr Awoonor-Williams said OPD per capita also declined from 0.35 in 2014 to 0.29 in 2015 because of public health interventions and clinical services in communities.

To address survival and improve maternal health problems, the health director said emergency and referral of new mothers through community ambulance services had been enhanced through the support of partners as part of strategies to improve neonatal and under-five mortality.