Improving Primary Health Care - Ghana

5 Medical clinics, all member of  the Association of Church Development Project (ACDEP)  in Northern Ghana will set up a small health computer centres to develop and integrate materials for health education and health information exchange within the Primary Health Care programmes. The clinics will be supported by the ACDEP headquarters with content creation (multi media) and editing of mini videos for community-level learning, knowledge sharing and as a tool for advocacy at the Ministry of Health. Staff of each centre and local community workers will be trained in basic ICT skills to work with the system.

The vision of ACDEP is a strong and active health sector with an ACDEP that is a pioneer in health innovation and learning, a membership that is strong in community engagement and empowerment in the provision of health services and results oriented.

This vision has been the driver behind all the sector programme support to the PHCs and the current Adolescent Reproductive Health and Traditional Medicine programme which is now entering its second phase of development and learning. We believe that ACDEP and the PHCs’ added value to the development of the health sector is its development of innovative, pro-poor and more sustainable and community-based approaches.

By innovation ACDEP means a health sector that is constantly looking for and pioneering new ways of being more responsive, effective and achieving results. Reflecting and learning from the field and investigating opportunities and alternative approaches outside the standard prescribed way of doing things that will achieve better and sustainable results – reach and outcomes – and value for money.

The network of ACDEP and the collective of the PHCs programmes in ACDEP for that matter, provide an appropriate platform for such innovation through piloting, learning, fine-tuning, sharing and influencing policy change in the light of the new information.

Community Drama at Nabu community near Nalerigu Ghana

Project goal:

• To contribute to improved health status of the rural population of targeted communities in northern Ghana

Project purpose

• Improve the capacity of ACDEP-member PHCs to provide an integrated and seamless heath service that recognises and integrates traditional medical practice and addressing reproductive health needs of adolescents

Project objectives

• To develop and implement an integrated adolescent reproductive health programme as an integral part of 12 ACDEP-member PHC activities.
• To improve the linkage with and practice of 5,000 traditional health practitioners for better health care in 100 rural communities
• To strengthen capacity of health and gender unit of the ACDEP Secretariat to support the development of innovative community-based health care, learning, and advocacy.
• To increase the capacity of 15 ACDEP-member health projects to develop and integrate ICT tools for health education and information exchange within the PHC programmes.( IICD undertakes to support and promote successful implementation of the ACDEP Project by acting as project advisor and facilitator on ICT issues, and provider of monitoring and evaluation services support for the ICT capacity building, integration and utilization within the project.

 

The goal of this three-year project (2010 – 2012) is to contribute to improved health status of the rural population of targeted communities in northern Ghana.

The purpose of the project (2010 – 2012) is to improve the capacity of the ACDEP-member primary health care projects (department) to provide an integrated and seamless primary health care that recognizes traditional medical practice and directly targeting and addressing adolescent reproductive health needs of adolescents.

How even a little ICT could improve healthcare in Langbinsi Ghana