Ghana NCD Alliance engages stakeholders on implementation of Community Score Card
The Ghana NCD Alliance (GhNCDA) in collaboration with the Ghana Health Service and the Ministry of Health held a stakeholders engagement meeting on the implementation of the Community Scorecard for Community Health Management Committee (CHMC) across the country.
The meeting further discussed the implementation status of the community scorecard and strategies to improve primary healthcare delivery within the targeted CHPS zones.
Commencing the meeting, the National Coordinator for Ghana NCD Alliance, Labram Musah, welcomed participants and entreated everyone to continue to play their roles as Ghana seeks to improve Universal Healthcare.
The Ghana NCD Alliance (GhNCDA), through the “Our Views Our Voices” initiative, has been at the forefront of promoting meaningful involvement of communities and people living with NCDs in the healthcare decision-making process.
This initiative is being facilitated through Community-Led Monitoring (CLM), a technique the GhNCDA has adopted to empower communities and build their capacities to monitor, participate, and strengthen healthcare delivery systems at the primary healthcare facilities.
Recognizing the importance of the community’s involvement in improving access to quality, affordable, and timely health services, the GhNCDA adopted the Ghana Health Service, Community Scorecard as a tool to facilitate the Community Led-Monitoring, with a primary focus on NCDs.
Through collaborative efforts with the Ghana Health Service and other key stakeholders, the GhNCDA in 2022 successfully implemented Community Led Monitoring using Community Scorecard within five CHPS Zones in the Greater Accra and the Ashanti Region.
As part of its “Our Views Our Voices” project activities, the GH NCD Alliance held a series of review meetings to monitor and evaluate the implementation of the Community-Led Monitoring to assess the achievements, and progress, and identify challenges and areas for improvement.
In his presentation, Godfred Tweneboah, a member of the GH NCD Alliance, revealed that the initiative has had several achievements as well as some challenges.
Among the achievements, it was stated that the CHMCs were still functioning as most the them held regular meetings except in Tomefa. Some CHMCs also had additional members to the initial members to enhance their capacity and efficiency
There has been provision of NCD screening and diagnostic tools like glucometer and sphygmomanometer with the communities continuing to access the facilities and develop action plans with some already being achieved.
All these achievements mean there has been overall improved healthcare delivery and cleanliness in the various districts.
In all these achievements, the challenges of the CSC and CHMCs were also embedded in the report.
Lack of basic medicine at some facilities, limited NHIS coverage of some medicines and services, knowledge gap on the concept of Community Led Monitoring, low capacity of the CHMC’s work due to lack of refresher training, and also death and resignation, poor monitoring, and reporting on action tracker issues and dependence of the CHMC on the health staff or district for web-based action tracker update were among some challenges that were encountered.
The report also makes key recommendations for action and policy formulations, including, an integrated approach in scaling up the scorecards, involvement of civil society and people living with NCDs in improving health services, an intentional allocation of funds to support mental health services at all levels and empower community health workers to educate community members about mental health conditions.
