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Community-Led Responsive and Effective Urban Health Systems (CHORUS) Ghana has called for effective collaboration among district health directorates, municipal assemblies, and communities to improve Community Health Planning Services (CHPS).
Dr Genevieve Aryeetey, CHORUS Co-Country Lead and Regional Capacity Building Lead, said this would ensure the prevention of sicknesses and promote good health practices in communities.
CHPS zone or CHPS provides community-level primary healthcare by engaging communities in taking decisions concerning their health and recognise that the primary producers of health are the individuals within households.
Dr Aryeetey made the call during the dissemination of baseline and needs assessment findings conducted in the Ashaiman and Madina Municipality, in Accra.
The dissemination followed research conducted by CHORUS in the Madina municipality to ascertain the health-seeking behaviours of community members in urban areas.
She said the need, therefore, was to increase CHPS engagement with communities as much as possible to achieve Universal Health Coverage.
The research revealed that about 34.4 per cent of the respondents stated that the pharmacy was their first point of call when seeking healthcare.
“27.7 per cent of the respondents say they visit the hospital when seeking healthcare and 0.3 per cent seek care from CHPS,” it stated.
Dr Aryeetey said this is where the problem was because CHPS were supposed to be the first point of call in seeking health before anything else due to their role of providing basic level primary healthcare to urban poor communities.
She said despite the important role of CHPS, the lack of awareness of their existence and activities had made pharmacies the first point of call during ill health.
The Country Co-Lead said this was due to logistical constraints, lack of dedicated physical structures for outreach points, and sustaining volunteers.
Dr Aryeetey said CHORUS planned to identify interventions and set up a technical group for implementation in urban communities and urged the community to support when the need arises.
Dr Mrs. Priscilla Anima, the Director, La-Nkwantanang Madina Municipal Health Directorate, speaking at the event, said people perceived CHPS as only providing services for maternal and childbirth but they also provide primary healthcare.
“CHPS zones are there for every member of the community and they can render services to all,” she added.
Dr Mrs. Anima assured that her directorate would assist with awareness creation to clear the misconceptions. “We need to intensify education on CHPS existence and their activities to make access to primary healthcare easy and ultimately achieve Universal Health Coverage by 2030,” she said.
She also called for all to ensure that CHPS zones had the resources to work with.
Participants at the meeting raised various health concerns such as sanitation, drug addiction among the youth and appealed to the assembly and health authorities to address them.
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