Attach_6-USAID_GHANA_HPN_Briefing_Paper_2012.pdf

USAID’s Health Program in Ghana

Ghanaians suffer from a high disease burden including HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, chronic malnutrition, and a poor health care delivery system.

Despite strong economic growth over the last decade, child mortality remains high. More than 100, 000 Ghanaians children die each year, accounting for more than half of all deaths in Ghana. Major causes after neonatal causes, are malaria, acute respiratory infections, diarrhea, and malnutrition. High maternal mortality rate is associated with lack of skilled attendance at birth. Maternal anemia is 59% and child anemia is 78%. Though the HIV prevalence in the general population is declining, it is still 10-20 times higher in the most at risk populations, than in the general population. Fifteen percent of tuberculosis (TB) patients are HIV positive.

The goal of USAID’s integrated health, population and nutrition program is to promote and improve the health and well-being of Ghanaians. This assistance invests in sustainable, high impact health initiatives. Further it is aligned with identified priorities of the Government of Ghana for the health sector stated in the Health Sector Medium Term Development Plan for 2010-2013 and the Ghana Shared Growth and Development Agenda 2010-2013

USAID’s activities promote treatment and offer both care and support for people living with HIV/AIDS and especially for the most at risk populations. These activities also further the development of prevention programs to reduce new infections. USAID support addresses malaria control and prevention through the U.S. President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI). Combating maternal and child mortality, improving nutrition and reproductive health and support family planning through the U. S. President’s Feed the Future and Global Health Initiatives, fighting tuberculosis and strengthening the overall national health care system and the national policy environment, including health financing, operations research and data for decision making and are all included under the scope of health programming through USAID. These efforts not only improve family health but they are essential to family income and economic growth in Ghanaians.

HIV/AIDS: The PEPFAR program in Ghana provides leadership and advisory support to the national response for most at risk populations, anti-stigma and gender-based violence against people living with HIV/AIDS. USAID builds capacity and supports policies and services for prevention, care and treatment of most-at-risk populations and people living with HIV/AIDS.

USAID supports innovative and evidence-based interventions to reduce new HIV infections, which is a key strategy towards long-term sustainability of programs.

Facts at a glance:

Total Fertility Rate: 4.0 Life Expectancy: 57 years Under 5 mortality: 82 Infant mortality per 1,000 live births: 50 Maternal Mortality Rate: 451/100,000 Contraceptive Prevalence Rate: 23% HIV Sero-prevalence: 1.5 Pregnant women tested for HIV: 50% Children suffering from anemia: 78% Children stunted: 23% Population with access to an improved water source: 80% IPTp coverage (two doses): 67% Children promptly treated for fever: 34.9% Population covered by NHIA: 60%

Malaria: As part of the PMI, USAID is increasing coverage of long-lasting insecticide-treated nets and indoor residual spraying, as well as supporting the case management and laboratory diagnostics, and rational use of artemisinin based combination therapies, and promoting treatment of malaria during pregnancy.

Maternal & Child Health: This program focuses on improving access, utilization and quality of essential maternal, newborn and child services; incorporates the integrated management of maternal services and childhood diseases, including malaria, diarrhea, pneumonia and malnutrition; quality improvements in maternal and child health services, training and provision of equipment. Activities also include household water, sanitation and hygiene to combat diarrheal diseases, social and behavior change communication

Nutrition: As part of the Feed the Future Initiative and Global Health Initiative, USAID works with the Government of Ghana to improve the nutritional status of women and young children.

Activities include service delivery for community based management of severe acute malnutrition; advocacy to strengthening multi-sectoral response to nutrition programming;

improving nutrition-related behaviors; infant feeding practices and care; dietary diversity.

USAID is also working to increase and smooth household income through an integrated nutrition and economic resiliency project.

Family Planning & Reproductive Health (FP/RH): USAID's interventions contribute to reductions in unmet needs for contraception by increasing understanding about and access to a range of contraceptive methods. Activities include promoting access to and utilization of FP/RH services at the facility and community levels; strengthening competencies for social and behavior change communication; strengthening FP services through the private sector and scale-up of social marketing. Interventions also focus on creating an enabling environment for commodity security and increasing access to emergency contraception and post abortion care.

Tuberculosis: USAID provides technical assistance to the National TB Control Program to improve access to TB services, improve TB diagnosis and case detection especially for most at risk populations including TB and HIV/AIDS patients.

Health Systems Strengthening:

USAID supports the strengthening of Ghana’s health system through improving the policy environment and providing assistance in leadership development, as well as financial and management support systems at decentralized levels of the Ghana health sector. Through close collaboration with development partners, USAID advocates for high impact, effective policy changes to improve the health commodity supplies chain. In addition, USAID supports sustainable supervision structures to ensure a high quality of care provided at all levels of the health system.

Country Development Cooperation Strategy (CDCS) The Ghana Mission is currently finalizing its CDCS. The results development objective for health has designed as a subset of the USG GHI strategy for Ghana. The results framework is below.