Eastern Region needs additional Community-based Health Planning and Services – Director
The Eastern Region needs additional Community-based Health Planning and Services (CHPS) compounds, to be able to promote maternal health effectively to reduce deaths, Dr George Bonsu, Deputy Regional Director of Health Services, has said.
He said currently, there are 578 zones demarcated for CHPS by the Ghana Health Service (GHS) in the region, but only 291 are functional.
Dr Bonsu said the CHPS are places where antenatal clinics, child deliveries and other health services could be assessed by the people.
Dr Bonsu who was giving an overview of health problems in the region said last year, the area recorded 135 maternal deaths, which were all preventable.
He said 54 functional CHPS compound, were provided by the Municipal and District Assemblies while the rest were offered through the initiative of host communities and development partners.
CHPS compounds are community based clinics where maternal health services are mainly the focus to reduce fatalities and are located mostly in rural communities to ensure prompt maternal health services to rural folks.
Per the World Health Organisation standards, people should not walk more than five kilometres to access health, therefore the CHPS compounds had been zoned and demarcated in a way to ensure that people within the distance would have access to healthcare.
Some of the districts with the highest deficit of the CHPS compounds are New Juaben with three out of the 31 CHPS facilities expected, Upper-Manya have three instead of the expected 28 with Akuapem South having seven instead of 32 compounds.
Others were Birim South with seven instead of 27, Kwaebibirem 24 instead of 44, Asuogyaman ,eight instead of 30 whilst Kwahu-North have 23 instead of 47 compounds.
Dr Bonsu said the high levels of maternal mortality remained a challenge to the health sector and there was the need for the district assemblies to help with the construction of many CHPS centres.
He said CHPS compounds need to be scaled up while poor quality care at all levels of service delivery including maternal health and weak community and facility based surveillance are improved.
Dr Bonsu said 57 per cent supervised or skilled delivery was recorded in the region, last year.
Source: GNA