Community Health Volunteer's Training Manual - Population Council

Module 1 The CHPS Concept
Topic 1 The CHPS concept
4
Topic 1 introduces you to the concept of CHPS, its origins and the six milestones of CHPS
implementation.
The Origins of CHPS
Bringing basic health care services to all Ghanaians has been the major objective of the
government of Ghana. Since independence, the Ghanaian government has worked on
improving health care services by building large hospitals in cities and big towns and health
centres in smaller towns and villages. While the hospitals satisfied the needs of the urban
populations, many people in rural communities did not have access to even basic health
services, because they lived far away from health facilities.
Regional +
District
Hospitals
65%
CHPS
35%
Figure 1.1.2: Pie chart of the health gap that CHPS fills.
It would interest you to know that even today the teaching hospitals, the regional hospitals,
and the district hospitals put together cover only 65 percent of the population of Ghana
with mainly curative care. This leaves as much as 35 percent of Ghanaians without adequate
health care. These large numbers of people live mostly in poor and remote villages that are
hard to reach and cut off when the rains come.
Can you imagine how life was for communities that did not have access to basic health
services? Children died from preventable diseases such as malaria, diarrhoea, measles, acute
respiratory tract infection and cholera. Pregnant women also died from complications either
because they did not recognise the danger signs early enough or did not seek care in time.
Some were not able to reach a health worker or facility in time due to lack of transport, bad
roads, or other difficulties.