AFRICA
Ghana

In 1969, the Ghanaian government instituted a national policy aimed at reducing the rapid rate of population growth through voluntary widespread use of modern contraceptive methods, reducing the high infant and maternal mortality rates, and ensuring a more geographically balanced development of the country. The policy was not considered successful and was revised in the late 1980s to address the failures.

Through its decentralized Primary Health Care (PHC) delivery system, the Ghanaian government is committed to providing health care for all. Under the PHC system, health management and delivery are decentralized to ensure widespread access to services for everyone.

In addition to the projects listed at the bottom of this page, the Population Council is carrying out the following research:

• Population Council researchers are exploring the theory that behaviors related to contraceptive practices can be contagious. Like viruses, ideas and practices vary in their “infectiousness.” Under the right circumstances, people may adopt certain attitudes and behaviors after exposure to only one or two people exhibiting them. Other ideas and behaviors may be much less infectious. Population Council researchers collaborated with scientists at the University of Cape Coast in southern Ghana and other Council investigators to explore contraceptive use as a form of social contagion. 

• Most people would not question the idea that childhood immunizations increase child survival. Some recent evidence, however, has thrown doubt on this common understanding. To further assess the effects of childhood vaccinations, Population Council researchers and others examined data collected over five years on immunization and child mortality in Ghana's rural Kassena-Nankana District. 

• Ghana undertook two situation analysis studies using the Council's methodology within the space of three years (1993 and 1996). The results of the 1993 study were widely disseminated and used by family planning managers and the Ministry of Health in preparing documents on standards and reproductive health service protocols. Results from the 1996 situation analysis were disseminated in Accra in September of 1997. 

• The Council also helped develop research systems, build research capacity, and launch a research dissemination project at a research station of the Ministry of Health located in Northern Ghana. The Navrongo Health Research Centre has provided important findings on how concerted efforts to reach communities generate change in health and family planning behavior.

Projects

• Reducing Maternal Morbidity and Mortality Through Increased Access to Comprehensive Abortion Care and Family Planning Services in Ghana

• Community-based Health Planning and Services

• ExCHANGE: Expanding Community Healthcare Accessibility Network

• Ghana Essential Medicines Initiative

• Navrongo Community Health and Family Planning Project

• Scaling Up the Community-based Health Planning and Services Initiative in Nkwanta District

• FRONTIERS projects

  • Acceptability, Feasibility, and Affordability of the World Health Organization (WHO) Goal-Oriented Antenatal Care (ANC) Package in Ghana
  • An Assessment of the Costs of Reproductive Health Services Offered at Four Faith-based Organizations
  • Assessment of the Functioning and Effectiveness of Community-based Distribution Programs
  • An Assessment of Trends in Intrauterine Device (IUD) Use

  • Comparing the Effectiveness and Costs of Alternative Strategies for Improving Access to Information and Services for the IUD in Ghana

  • Face-to-Face Complementary Selling of Health Products in Ghana

  • Financial Sustainability Initiative for Reproductive Health Organizations in Africa

  • Health Sector Reforms and Implications for Reproductive Health Priority Setting

  • Improving the Ghanaian Safe Motherhood Program

  • National Dissemination and Utilization of Results from the Assessment of Trends in Intrauterine Device (IUD) Use in Ghana

  • Transferring Ghana's System of Evidence-based Health Program Development: Program for an Initial Exchange with Sierra Leone and Burkina Faso

  Horizons project

  • Testing Prepackaged Therapy for Male Urethral Discharge Syndrome in Ghana: A Feasibility Study

Publications/Resources on Ghana

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See Also

• Frontiers in Reproductive Health: Ghana

• Situation Analysis

Offsite Links

• Exchange Africa

• Ghana Health Service Community-based Health Planning and Services Initiative

• INDEPTH Network

• Navrongo Health Research Centre

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This page updated 31 March 2008

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