The Ghana Health Service (GHS) and the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) have launched a new partnership aimed at reducing maternal and newborn deaths in the Ashanti, Eastern, and Central regions of Ghana.
Dubbed the “KOICA-RAMCA Network of Practice,” the collaboration is designed to address critical gaps in healthcare delivery in the next 4-5 years in beneficiary regions.
The Korean government is committing a whopping 13 million US dollars on the project, which seeks to improve the network of practice.
It is aimed at empowering midwives and general nurses at CHPS compounds and health centers at the primary healthcare level by enhancing their skills, knowledge, and attitudes.
Implemented alongside a clinical mentorship program, where experts from teaching and district hospitals, the initiative seeks to ensure that complications are managed effectively at the local level, reducing the need for unnecessary referrals.
Ashanti Regional Director of Health Services, Dr. Fred Adomako-Boateng, told the launch at the sidelines of a 2-day health sector review meeting the project seeks to provide clinical mentorship and capacity building, leadership and governance, as well as logistics.
““What they are going to do is, if you look at the CHIPS compound together with the health centre, which is the hub, or for want of better word, the primary network, they are going to build capacity. The skills, the knowledge, and the right attitudes of midwife, general nurses within that primary care network.
And one main way that they are going to do that is what we call the clinical mentorship. Look, if you look at the morbidities and mortalities that we have, together with the inequity of staff distribution per what we have seen, the issue is, how do you build the capacity of a midwife so that cases that you don’t refer, they are managed at either a CHIPS compound or a health centre, rather than referring all of them to let’s say the district hospital. That is what this project seeks to do.”
The scope of the KOICA-GHS Alliance
According to Dr. Adomako-Boateng, midwives and nurses providing care at primary health centers such as CHPS compounds and health centers will have their skills, attitude, and knowledge improved as they receive mentorship from experts from district and teaching hospitals.
This means the beneficiaries would be adequately resourced to effectively manage complications at the local level in a move to reduce unnecessary referrals.
He told journalists leadership training would be advanced to frontline health workers to adequately equip midwives in charge of maternity units while essential supplies such as life-saving medicines and diagnostic services will be provided.
He explained this will provide security for medical emergencies in the unlikely event of postpartum bleeding, among others.
“The Korean government is going to help Ghana, eastern region, Ashanti region, and then central region to do is logistics and commodities. Look, if the woman is bleeding and you need medicine to give this woman to stop the bleeding, there is nothing that you can do.
Or if you need some diagnostic equipment to be able to come up that look, this problem that is being presented to us, this is what is causing that. If you cannot do that lab, then it means that you have a challenge. We know that we are doing our best.”
This, Dr. Adomako-Boateng says, has been done in collaboration with UNICEF.
He expressed his profound gratitude to the Korean government for the gesture, adding the project, which is built on accountability, will also be tied with measurable performance with a broader goal of ensuring quality primary healthcare services to underserved populations.
“Korean government through this network of practice or primary care health project is going to support us in doing that. It’s basically going to be about four years. And the best thing about this, when it comes to (3:54) logistics, they are going to help us to identify the things that we need.
For this, they have sublet this to UNICEF, which is going to do that. So that is what we are going to do. It’s about four to five years project.
And for the best thing that this programme is going to do is the accountability mechanism. It’s not going to be like, no, we gave you this. We are going to tie all this performance with the results that we are going to generate.”
The Second Secretary of the Embassy of the Republic of Korea in Ghana, Donghyun Shin, says the Korean government is looking forward to collaborating with the government of Ghana at regional and district levels of healthcare.
“The Korean government and Korean people are looking forward to strengthening the primary health condition of Ghana, including the Ashanti region, through this project. The Korean government is funding 13 million US dollars for this project. ”.
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