Title: Community System Strengthening of the GF NFM 1
Donor: Global Fund through the Ghana AIDS Commission
Timeframe: 2015 – 2017
Project Description: Strong community systems are required to effectively support the health system for the overall improvement of health outcomes, particularly those related to HIV, tuberculosis (TB), Malaria, and Maternal and Child Health (MCH) among others while considering the needs of the most vulnerable populations. At the community level, the existence of two parallel systems at the service delivery level and poor coordination and complementarity makes their impact less effective. This is against the background that programmatic data and experience reveals the following challenges: 1. Increasing prevalence of HIV especially among pregnant women, 2. Limited adherence to medication and treatment including ART and TB medication, 3. Poor quality of services at the service delivery points for all the focus diseases including PMTCT. 4. Limited stigma and discrimination reduction-related interventions targeting HIV and TB. To address the above challenges, communities (infected and affected) need to be empowered to hold service providers and other duty bearers accountable regarding access and quality of interventions. Therefore under this project, the following programmatic changes were focused on; Introduction of interventions that strengthen the capacity of selected NAs in policy advocacy, 2. Repositioning of selected NSAs to organize CBOs and engage communities (infected and affected) to better advocate for and monitor service access and quality across all the diseases; 3, The Social Monitoring and Accountability Committees (SAMCs) being inclusive in terms of membership and empowered to engage with community-based agents for improved effectiveness.
Outcome/Results: The project report can be accessed here