The World Health Organization (WHO) would be interested in how health managers in the Volta Region would at the end of 2016, achieve “improved health outcomes through the use of quality improvement approaches”.
A representative of the WHO gave the hint in a message at the 2015 Performance Review of the Regional Health Directorate under the theme “Achieving improved health outcomes through the use of quality improvement approaches.”
“We would be interested in your performance based on your theme,” the representative said.
He said the Volta Region had lost its top performances in the health sector in recent years and expressed the hope the situation would change for the better.
The annual performance reviews look at how the health sector fared in the Region in the previous year with the view to mapping out strategies to improve the situation in the ensuing year.
As a peer review forum, each Municipal and District Health Directorate presents for discussion, reports on how they fared in delivering various health variables, challenges faced and best practices they could adopt from each other.
In a summary, Dr Joseph Nuertey, the Regional Director of Health described the performance for the past year (2014) as “mixed”
“Whilst we saw a decline in some areas, we improve slightly in many areas.
“Limited financial inflows from traditional sources as well as the National Health Insurance Authority” posed a major challenge.
There was also the problem of frequent electricity outages and threats of disconnections by the Electricity Company of Ghana and drops in facility attendance when managers attempted to charge “a token to take care of utilities.
These notwithstanding the Region posted positive strides in nutrition which saw constant declines in the underweight rate among children below five years from 12.1 in 2013, 10.9 in 2014 and 9.8 in 2015.
Family Planning “saw an increase in the couple year protection from 161,228.5 in 2014 to 166,924.1 in 2015.
Preference for long-term as against short term methods saw persistent increases even though there was a decline in general coverage from 28 percent in 2014 to 26 percent in 2015.
Agotime-Ziope, Adaklu, Akatsi-North, Ho West, Krachi East and Krachi West showed persistent improvement in immunization coverage from 2013 to 2015.
Keta and Ho Municipalities however saw persistent drops in their immunizations from 2013 to 2015 with Ho Municipal being the worst performer in the country.
Still-birth rate in the Region declined from 1.9 percent in 2014 to 1.7 percent in 2015, while maternal mortality rate declined from 178 per 1,000 to137 per 1,000.
The management of the Sacred Heart Hospital, Abor, received commendation for “the swift response in stemming the tide of maternal deaths there.
Source: GNA
