Ghana

A predominantly agricultural country, Ghana is rich with natural resources and enjoys roughly twice the per capita output of its neighbors in West Africa. Cultural norms in Ghana include a preference for large families, even when poverty makes it difficult to educate or feed children. And while HIV has been slow to spread, a prevalence of 2.3 percent among 15-49 year olds nevertheless threatens to undermine Ghana’s recent social and economic gains.

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:

• Expand contraceptive choice
• Make motherhood safer
• Provide HIV and AIDS prevention and treatment
• Improve the quality of reproductive health care

Expanding Contraceptive Choice
A shortage of skilled providers, inadequate supplies, and lack of accurate information about methods – often tied to cultural beliefs – have hindered men’s and women’s access to modern contraception in Ghana. Through the ACQUIRE Project, funded by USAID, EngenderHealth collaborates with Ghana's Ministry of Health, Pathfinder International, and other agencies to:

• Promote the use of long-acting contraceptives such as Norplant implants and intrauterine devices (IUDs);
• Improve health care providers’ knowledge and skill levels to provide quality sterilization services;
• Integrate family planning services into existing HIV treatment sites;
• Raise awareness of no-scalpel vasectomy among potential clients.
  • Within a year of launching this initiative, the number of vasectomy procedures performed in Ghana was more than six times higher than the average number over the prior 10 years.

Making Motherhood Safer
In 2006, EngenderHealth launched the Reducing Maternal Morbidity and Mortality (R3M) program, and with our partners we increase providers’ capacity to:

• Provide women with high quality prenatal and emergency obstetric services;
• Prevent and repair fistula;
• Offer critical post-abortion care services;
• Prevent post-partum hemorrhage.

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. Specific efforts include:

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

Providing Quality Health Care
Through its Quality Health Partners (QHP) initiative, EngenderHealth reaches more than 200 facilities—including regional hospitals, district hospitals, and health centers—in Ghana’s 30 most impoverished districts to train health workers and introduce proven approaches to ensure high-quality service. Working with midwives, nurses, doctors, and management staff, the project is designed to:

• Improve child survival;
• Introduce low-cost quality assurance and supervision methods and tools;
• Integrate disease surveillance and response, including avian flu;
• Improve human resources policies for health workers.

In addition, Ghana is one of 21 West African countries included in EngenderHealth’s Action for West Africa Region—Reproductive Health (AWARE-RH) Project.