Background

USAID's Health program aims at decreasing mortality among women and children, especially by reducing the impact and spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and avian influenza. The health program has recently shifted focus from capacity building at the central level to service delivery in communities. The program expands access to quality health services, empowers individuals and communities to adopt positive health practices, and strengthens the capacity of community and district-level health officers to plan and manage health programs.

USAID/Ghana Health interventions include:

Preventing and controlling malaria and major infectious diseases: Ghana is one of the U.S. President's Malaria Initiative (PMI) focus countries. The new resources to combat malaria in Ghana will significantly increase support for multiple forms of prevention and control to help reduce sickness and death. USAID promotes the sale and use of insecticide-treated bed nets, particularly for pregnant women and children under five, and provides community based treatment of the bed nets.

Reducing transmission and impact of HIV/AIDS: USAID focuses on HIV prevention and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases among groups that are most at risk. Additionally, USAID is organizing orphan groups and associations of people living with HIV to assist them in accessing basic care, food rations and psychosocial support. USAID is strengthening HIV-related clinical care, and linking the facilities to community-based activities, including reduction of stigma and adherence to anti-retroviral treatment.

Improving maternal and child survival, reproductive health, and nutrition: USAID assists in training and deploying health officers to underserved rural communities in southern Ghana to increase access to quality basic health care. To train sufficient nurses for this initiative, USAID supports eight in-service and four pre-service schools. USAID promotes safe motherhood by improving behaviors and practices before, during and after birth, especially in the rural areas, through training of health staff, logistical support and facility rehabilitation. To broaden access to family planning, USAID supports the training of health workers in providing family planning services and assists in behavior change campaigns to strengthen both the role of men in family planning and the responsibility of health workers in providing accurate information about family planning to clients. USAID also provides contraceptives to support family planning and reproductive health.

Key achievements of USAID/Ghana Health program through 2007:

• Over 60,000 women in USAID-supported districts delivered their babies using skilled birth attendants and more than 60 percent of their newborns received essential newborn care.

• More than 20,000 children in USAID-assisted districts received treatment for malaria, diarrhea and other illnesses from a trained health care provider.

• Through the Food for Peace program, USAID/Ghana reached over 37,000 children with food rations to help reduce under-five mortality.

• Family planning service points in USAID-assisted districts increased by 100 through the use of trained community health officers in these underserved rural areas.

• With USAID assistance in planning and procuring contraceptives, the number of service delivery points that reported being out of stock decreased from 97 in 2006 to 65 in 2007.

• The number of households owning insecticide treated bed nets increased from 3 percent in 2003 to 19 percent in 2006, and children under five who slept under an insecticide treated bed net increased from 4 percent to 22 percent over the same period.

• Ghana's first known outbreak of avian influenza in April 2007 was successfully contained, and was officially declared over in September 2007. There were no known human cases.