Government to expand CHPS project – Health Ministry

The Public Relations Officer of the Ministry, Mr Robert Cudjoe says the government is in the process of expanding the Community-based Health Planning and Service (CHPS) compounds project.

“There are plans in place to ensure that we scale up the project by building several more in addition to what has already been built, and for those that have just been started, we’ll just complete them,” he said

He therefore downplayed suggestions the current government has abandoned CHPS project.

The CHPS project formed part of a national strategy to deliver essential community-based health services involving health planning and service delivery within communities nationwide, with a primary focus on communities in deprived sub-districts.

He said this on Accra based Citi FM in reaction to reports that some CHPS compounds have been neglected by the incumbent administration.

Mr Cudjoe explained that the CHPS project is in line with the goal to accelerate the attainment of universal health coverage, hence “there’s no way a government will come into power and abandon this concept which, worldwide, has been hailed as one of the best measures to ensure access to health care.”

He further stated that the Ministry had to tackle other issues before concentrating on building more compounds, “We have these National Health Insurance claims and there are other debts that the new government came to meet which are being handled on a monthly basis, where some monies are being paid. So going forward, we will get to the point where you will see a lot of CHPS compounds being built.”

He added that “We have several CHPS compounds dotted all over Ghana so if you have noticed somebody occupying an uncompleted CHPS compound, I don’t think that should be used as a yard stick to generalises the entire policy saying the current government has abandoned it.”