The Ghana Health Services and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) have ended a 5-year project known as “Strengthening Community-based Health Services and Promoting a Life-course Approach” in Upper East, Upper West, Northern, North East, and Savannah regions.
The project which started in 2017 ended in 2023 with 1, 649 Community Health Officers (CHOs) across the 5 regions trained to help improve health delivery. Capacity-building support was also extended to 3,386 nursing students and 238 tutors in health training schools.
The CHPS for Life initiative focused on promoting health and preventive diseases through health education, vaccination, family planning, and nutrition needs interventions. Dr. Anthony Nsiah Asare, the Director General of Ghana Health Services said the support the government of Ghana had from the people and government of Japan through the JICA project brought health delivery to the doorsteps of many Ghanaians towards achieving the Universal Health Coverage.
“The CHPS has achieved Universal Health Coverage and it is going to help us go further and the idea is that by 2030 if we continue where we are going, where the National Health Insurance is looking at the financial aspect and the CHPS is looking at the geographical aspect, then the definition of a universal health coverage is achieve through these feet.”
Dr. Andrew Ayim, Deputy Director, Policy read a speech on behalf of the Director General of GHS in Tamale in the Northern region during a dissemination forum to officially end the JICA supported project.
Even though the project has come to and end, Dr. Ayim said the lessons learnt will be used to enter another policy concept with the support from other donor partners such as the World Bank to strengthen the health centres “so that when referrals are made from the CHPS compounds, the health centres will be well equipped to receive it”
Takuya Shizume, a representative of JICA was excited that the CHPS for Life project has made significant efforts to improve health delivery, especially at the rural community level.
He said the purpose of introducing the CHPS implementation was born out of the difficult situation of the health status in Northern Ghana.
Upper East Regional Health Director, Dr. Emmanuel Kofi Dotse in a closing remark, thanked the government of Japan for the support to the health sector.
Dr. Dotse said the support skills and tools that the health sector in Ghana has gotten from the project go a long way to improve health delivery in the 5 regions of the North.
Source: A1Radioonline.com|101.1Mhz|Joshua Asaah|Tamale|Ghana
