Story by: Adam Akilu Gideon Abrantie/ PAD FM, Damongo.
The Savannah Regional Health Directorate held its maiden annual performance review meeting on the 10th and 11th of March, 2021 to assess the performance of the entire region on all aspects of the health sector strategic objectives on the theme; “improving access to healthcare amid COVID-19”.
The performance of Savannah Regional Health Directorate was assessed by officials from Bono Regional Health Directorate on the bases of four underlining objectives namely, (I) Ensure sustainable, affordable, equitable and easily accessible healthcare service, (II) Reduce morbidity and mortality, intensify prevention and control of non communicable disease, (III) Enhance efficiency in governance and management and (IV) Intensify prevention and control of communicable disease and ensure the reduction of new HIV/AIDS and other STI, especially among the vulnerable groups.
In the presentation of the report of the assessment, the Savannah Regional Health Directorate improved in most aspects of the assessment as compared to the previous year.
Assessing the performance of the region on objective 1 which is “ensuring sustainable, affordable, equitable, easily accessible healthcare services”, even though their performance was not up to satisfaction in some aspects, the Savannah Regional Health Directorate generally performed moderately well and factors that contributed to the progress was as a result of their partnership with MSI and LARC and equitable distribution of available staff in the the region. They also blamed low utilisation of services due to COVID-19 pandemic and the unwillingness of doctors, nurses and midwives to accept posting to the region as the reasons for which they performed poorly in this category of the assessment.
On objective 2 which is “reduce morbidity and mortality, intensify prevention and control of non-communicable disease”, the assessment revealed that 14.90% of adolescents died in 2020 as compared 11.04% in previous year 2019 indicating that more adolescents died in 2020 as compared to 2019 and the reason for the increase in adolescent mortality rate per 10,000 was as a result of road traffic accidents, accidental poisoning and exposure to noxious substances.
Assessment of objective 3 which is “enhance efficiency in governance and management ” also revealed that the Savannah Regional Health Directorate performance was satisfactory. They performed very well in the spects of adherence to procurement plan, proportion of NHIS claims submitted on time, percentage of district hospitals with functional public health units and per capita GoG/all sources allocation among other satisfactory performances.
Meanwhile the Regional Health Directorate also performed poorly in the aspects of percentage of medicines prescribed by generic name and percentage of prescription of antibiotics indicating more prescription especially antibiotics have been made in the year under review as compared to previous year 2019.
Generally, the Savannah Regional Health Directorate performed moderately well in the year under review 2020 as compared to previous year 2019 amidst COVID-19 pandemic.
The Savannah Regional Health Director Dr. Chrysantus Kubio in his address congratulated the health workers and called on them and all stakeholders not to relent but work together to ensure that they improve healthcare delivery in Savannah Region.
He also thanked all their partners who supported them in achieving these successes amidst several challenges.
