By Opesika Tetteh Puplampu
Atortorkorpe-Ada, March 28, GNA – The Ada East District Health Directorate has identified six factors that contributed to the regression of health service delivery in the area for 2024.
The directorate has also put measures in place to help improve upon health delivery in the district.
This came to light in an Annual Holistic Assessment presentation during the 2024 annual performance review of the directorate.
Mrs. Judith Asase, District Health Information Officer, who took stakeholders through the presentation under the topic ‘Universal Access to Better and Efficiently Managed Quality Healthcare Services’, disclosed that the directorate recorded a decrease in the family planning acceptor rate due to a stockout of commodities.
Mrs. Asase said other factors were the reduction in skilled delivery, no equipment inventory registers for most health facilities, inadequate geographical distribution of critical staff, low OPD per capita, and a high proportion of IGF spent on personal emoluments due to the payment of salaries for non-mechanised staff.
She explained that the family planning acceptor rate for 2024 was 37.1 percent compared to 46.2 percent and 38.7 percent, respectively, for 2023 and 2022.
The Ada East district is one of the 29 districts, municipal, and metropolitan health directorates in the Greater Accra Region and one of the purely rural districts in the region.
She indicated that the directorate performed relatively high in most indicators, including having 97.1 per cent performance in the proportion of children due for Measles-Rubella 2 and receiving Long-Lasting Insecticidal Nets (LLIN), adding that 97.3 per cent of babies born within the period started breastfeeding within one hour after delivery.
Despite the efforts put into healthcare delivery by staff, some of these identified factors contribute to the regression of the workforce.
The management of the directorate pledged to liaise with the Regional Medical Store (RMS) to stock family planning commodities, collaborate with the Regional Health Directorate (RHD) to mechanise non-mechanised staff, and renovate and improve the infrastructure at some sub-districts to improve posting of critical staff to such areas.
GNA