Background

The USAID Health program empowers individuals and communities to adopt positive health practices, expand access to quality health services, and strengthen institutional capacity to plan and manage health programs. The program approaches are to: raise awareness of reproductive health, HIV/AIDS, and maternal/child health; strengthen systems in logistics management, surveillance, training, supervision, and human resource management; and support advocacy to foster individual empowerment, community participation, and government commitment to improve health indicators. The program also focuses on capacity building to address the threat of an avian influenza pandemic.

USAID/Ghana Health Program Interventions Include:

Improving Child Survival, Health and Nutrition: USAID, through the Community-based Health Planning and Services (CHPS) project, trains health care providers. They are deployed in rural communities in 30 USAID-supported districts to raise citizens' awareness about education and provide basic service delivery. To train sufficient nurses for this initiative, USAID supports eight new in-service training schools and four pre-service schools. USAID also supports malaria and breastfeeding interventions to reduce infant mortality.

Improving Maternal Health: USAID supports safe motherhood practices during delivery, especially in rural underserved areas, through training of healthcare providers, logistical support and facility rehabilitation.

Preventing and Controlling Major Infectious Diseases: USAID promotes the sale and use of insecticide-treated mosquito nets for pregnant women, children under five and the general public. USAID assists with the development of standards for HIV testing at tuberculosis (TB) service sites and for TB diagnosis for HIV-positive individuals. In addition, USAID provides technical and financial support to Ghana in its contingency planning for avian influenza.

Reducing Transmission and Impact of HIV/AIDS: USAID provides HIV prevention and sexually transmitted infections services to most-at-risk groups, such as sex workers and men having sex with men. Associations of people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA), and orphan and vulnerable children (OVC) groups are being organized to access basic care, food rations and psychosocial support. USAID complements a Global Fund-financed program by developing and strengthening community-based activities located near hospitals to promote counseling and testing, and anti-retroviral treatment adherence.

Supporting Family Planning: USAID supports efforts to strengthen the marketing of family planning commodities and trains health providers to conduct health session on the benefits of using modern methods of contraceptives.

Highlights of USAID/Ghana Health Program Success Through 2005

• Reduced Transmission of HIV/AIDS: HIV prevalence is stabilizing around 2.7 percent for pregnant women in Ghana. Female sex worker interventions are scaling up, with an additional 3,000 sex workers included in the second half of 2005. USAID provided food rations for 3,600 HIV-infected people and their families.
  
  
• Increased Ownership of Treated Nets: Ownership and usage of insecticide-treated nets among pregnant women at USAID sites has increased from 2.9 percent to 17.1 percent. Through USAID's advocacy, taxes on the nets have been reduced, making the subsidized nets even more affordable to families with lower incomes.
  
  
• Improved Maternal Health and Nutrition: Key protocols, standards and guidelines for safe obstetric care have been developed and adapted for doctors and nurses. Over 200 providers from Ghana's ten regions were trained to use them.
  
  
• Promoted Access to Health Services: With USAID support, medical standards and health care delivery protocols, curriculum and training manuals were developed for health services. Demonstration/training sites were established in eight districts to offer practical in-service training. The training sites have increased access to health services and improved service delivery.
  
  
• Provided Training Institutions with Teaching and Learning Materials: USAID provided all of the 42 nursing and midwifery pre-service training institutions in Ghana with medical equipment, anatomical models, textbooks and other teaching and learning materials.