By Ewoenam Kpodo
Ho, Oct 08, GNA- Ghana’s celebrated Community-based Health Planning and Services (CHPS) model is being perfected abroad while stagnating at home, Dr John Koku Awoonor-Williams, Technical Advisor, Ministry of Health, has observed.
The CHPS blueprint is the nation’s primary healthcare strategy for bridging geographical equity gaps and achieving Universal Health Coverage (UHC). Developed from the 1994 Navrongo Health Research Centre experiment, it was adopted as national policy in 1999 to shift primary healthcare from distant sub-district clinics to the doorsteps of rural and underserved households.
Dr Awoonor-Williams, delivering an address at the Medical Superintendents’ Group (MSG) 24th Annual General and Scientific Conference in Ho, said over 15 African countries, including Ethiopia, Mozambique, Tanzania, Kenya and South Africa, came to Ghana with notebooks to learn CHPS, went back and overtook Ghana.
“Five years of Ethiopia coming here, their primary healthcare indicators are now three times what we have,” the medical professional said.
Dr Awoonor-Williams, who is former Upper East Regional Director of Health, said Ghana had drifted from its own prioritised implementation plan, moving from MDGs to SDGs and now to UHC 2030 with little reflection on past commitments.
He cited his time doubling as Regional Director and Medical Superintendent for Navrongo and Bongo hospitals, when maternal deaths surged in the region because the theatre at Walewale was closed, and when just one obstetrician-gynaecologist, nine doctors and five medical superintendents served the entire region, saying it took innovation to redeem the situation.
Dr Awoonor-Williams said: “Innovation is not about invention” but doing things differently for quick results.
He called for policy coherence, noting that specialists were willing to mentor CHPS zones and health centres but were blocked by contradictory prescribing and referral policies.
“Free care is not the same as effective access. Quality is not the same as equitable care. And none of these by themselves will lead us to UHC,” he cautioned.
The public health physician urged medical superintendents to move beyond counting numbers to focus on effective coverage, build people not just facilities, ensure data drives decisions, and sustain gains beyond donor-funded projects. “Leadership is the cause; everything else is the effect,” he said, quoting Prof Stephen Adei, former Director General and Rector of the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration.
Togbe Tepre Hodo IV, the President, Volta Regional House of Chiefs, said Ghana risked falling back to the Stone Age if doctors were not empowered with modern medical devices, saying while other countries were advancing with the latest gadgets and medical technologies, Ghana was being left behind.
“Medicine, like all other scientific endeavours, is growing in leaps and bounds,” he noted, and said Ghana must catch up with the times.
He expressed optimism that the conference would provide a platform for medical superintendents to evaluate what needed to be done to improve healthcare delivery in the country.
Prof Ernest Yorke, the President, Ghana Medical Association, said the Association remained committed to working closely with the MSG to advance doctors’ welfare, strengthen clinical leadership and improve healthcare delivery.
He called on government, the Ghana Health Service, the National Health Insurance Authority and development partners to ensure that investment in FPHC was matched by adequate investment in human resources, infrastructure, medicines, equipment and institutional capacity for the primary healthcare be truly free, accessible and acceptable in terms of quality.
The conference taking place from October 05-10 is being held on the theme, “Leadership and Innovation in Free Primary Healthcare towards Achieving Universal Health Coverage in Ghana: The Role of Medical Superintendents.”
GNA
Edited by Maxwell Awumah/Benjamin Mensah
Reporter: Ewoenam Kpodo, GNA
Reporter’s email address: [email protected]