Ghana

A predominantly agricultural country, Ghana is rich with natural resources, yet poverty and poor health persist. Cultural norms in Ghana include a preference for large families, even when parents lack resources to adequately educate or feed their children. And while HIV has been slow to spread, women overwhelmingly bear the brunt of the disease.

It is within this context that for more than 20 years, EngenderHealth has worked with local partners to tailor programs that respect community values, traditions, and beliefs while strengthening capacity to increase contraceptive use, improve health outcomes, and make lasting positive changes in the Ghanaian public health system. In Ghana, EngenderHealth helps to:

• Prevent maternal mortality and injury through access to family planning
• Expand HIV and AIDS prevention and treatment
• Improve the quality of health care

 
Preventing Maternal Deaths and Injuries
In 2006, EngenderHealth launched the Reducing Maternal Morbidity and Mortality (R3M) program, and with our partners we increase health care providers’ capacity to:

• Prevent unwanted pregnancies by providing high quality family planning services, particularly long-acting and permanent methods
• Develop and implement strategies to engage men in reproductive health

Expanding HIV and AIDS Prevention and Treatment
Preventing HIV among pregnant and postpartum mothers, and responding to the sexual and reproductive health needs of HIV-positive women, form the core of EngenderHealth’s work around HIV and AIDS in Ghana. Activities aim to:

• Promote voluntary counseling and testing for HIV
• Encourage sound infection control practices at health clinics
• Integrate HIV prevention with maternal health services
• Provide high quality antiretroviral drug treatment
• Foster efforts to reduce stigma and discrimination against HIV-positive people

Improving the Quality of Health Care
Through the Quality Health Partners (QHP) initiative, EngenderHealth and its partners reach more than 200 facilities—including regional hospitals, district hospitals, and health centers—in Ghana’s 37 most impoverished districts to train health workers and introduce proven approaches to ensure high-quality service. Working with midwives, nurses, doctors, and management staff—as well as policymakers—the project is designed to:

• Reduce maternal and child deaths
• Increase the availability and use of family planning
• Introduce low-cost quality assurance and supervision methods and tools
• Improve efforts to prevent and treat malaria
• Expand disease surveillance and response (particularly for avian and pandemic flu)
• Strengthen comprehensive HIV and AIDS services

EngenderHealth also plays a significant role as a partner on the Community-based Health Planning and Services Technical Assistance Initiative, which expands a model of community-based services that deploys trained nurses to underserved rural and urban areas. This is a key strategy of the Ghanaian government to increase access to health care throughout the country.