Communities encouraged to accept referrals to secondary healthcare facilities

Residents of rural communities in the Upper West Region have been advised to accept referrals from Community-based Health Planning and Services (CHPS) facilities in their communities to secondary health facilities when the need arises.

Mr Ambrose Naawa, the Upper West Regional CHPS Coordinator, who made the call in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in Wa, said referring patients from those facilities to higher facilities should not be seen as a punishment.

He indicated that CHPS facilities were designed to provide limited services to the people in the hinterlands.

“When you say CHPS has a mandate, there is some minimum package of service that they can provide, and so anytime a community member is not well and visits the CHPS compound it is the Community Health Officer (CHO) who assesses the situation to see whether that condition is within their remit to provide those services.

“When the condition is beyond them then they refer to the next level and so we see referral not as a punishment but as a way of connecting the CHPS to the entire health system.
They will assess you, stabilize you at the CHPS before they refer you to the next level,” Mr Naawa explained.

He said patients who were referred to other facilities or their caregivers were counselled for them to understand the reason for the referral to the next level.

Mr Naawa indicated that patients who were referred to other facilities were directly linked by the service providers at the CHPS to those facilities for the needed care to be delivered timely.

He mentioned skilled delivery services as one of the services that could not be provided in some CHPS compounds because there were no midwives in those facilities.

He, therefore, said pregnant women seeking skilled delivery services in such facilities would have to be referred to a higher facility where those services were available.

The CHPS Coordinator observed that in some CHPS facilities the CHO could conduct emergency delivery services.

He added that some CHPS facilities that had midwives could still refer delivery cases to secondary facilities depending on the patient’s delivery history.

“There are zones where we have midwives who are well trained and can provide delivery services, so you don’t need to refer a (pregnant) woman if the woman is not having any complications.

If she has complications, a midwife can be present, but the environment would not be conducive enough for her to provide some of the services when complications arise,” Mr Naawa explained.

Speaking on the CHPS coverage in the region, Mr Naawa said 484 demarcated CHPS zones out of a total of 496 CHPS zones in the region were fully operational.

He said they were working hard to make the remaining 12 CHPS zones in the regions operational.

The CHPS Coordinator, however, said some CHPS zones were operational but without compounds and appealed to benevolent individuals and organisations to help provide compounds for those zones.