Community Health Management Committee members receive training

The Ghana NCD Alliance (GhNCDA) in collaboration with the Ghana Health Service has held a two-day training and fieldwork on Community Scorecard for Community Health Management Committee (CHMC) members from Avenor Electoral Area in Accra.

The training is under a programme dubbed: “Our View Our Voices Project,” being implemented by the GhNCDA to empower the CHMC members to use the Scorecard to assess health delivery, with particular focus on non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in their communities.

The Community Scorecard (CSC) is an initiative to engage communities to identify system gaps and provides an opportunity to close the gaps, especially in the CHPS compounds and health centres.

The training and the fieldwork were facilitated by officials from the Ghana Health Service who took the participants through the CSC processes, the concept of the CHPS compound and the role of the CHMC members.

Mr Labram Musah, the National Coordinator of the GhNCDA in an interview with the Ghana News Agency said the CHPS compound model of health delivery service was a good initiative and urged the communities to own it.

He said the project would help in empowering the people to mobilise themselves to solicit support for their health facilities instead of always depending on government for the provision of logistics and other materials.

Mr Musah, who is also the Programmes Director of the Vision for Alternative Development said the increase in NCDs, the high cost of treatment and death was alarming and that there was the need for all hands to be on deck to help in the reduction and prevention of the diseases.

Ms Juliet A. Boateng, the Policy and Advocacy Officer of GhNCDA, said cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, strokes and other NCDs were trending, adding that; “Currently in Ghana over 94,00 people die annually due to NCDs and globally one third of the adult population are dying of the diseases.”

She said the ‘Our View Our Voices Project’ was to redirect the energies of the CHMC members to compliment the efforts of policymakers so that it would not always be like health issues were for the people at the top affair but to help meet each other in between.

“We are targeting the community members, empower them with the Scorecard to be able to tell that these things in the health facilities are contributing to the NCDs burden or even all other health challenges, like maternal deaths, neonatal deaths, cleanliness in the facilities, care and respect to patients, availability of diagnostic services and all of that.

Ms Boateng said: “From these assessments we can suggest ways by which these challenges can be improved through community health action plan.”

She said the training were being held for two selected districts, namely the Accra Metro and the Ga South District.
The trainees under the fieldwork at the Kaneshie Polyclinic in the Avenor Electoral where they interviewed some patients and staff on the performance and the challenges of the facility and later met with the authorities of Polyclinic.