As part of a 5-year USAID funded “People for Health”(P4H) project, being implemented by the SEND-Ghana, Penplusbytes and Ghana News Agency consortium, a kickoff training is scheduled to take place from the 27th to 28th of April, 2017 in the Northern regional capital, Tamale. The participants are expected to be drawn from a network of health service providers, citizens and key populations who would leverage a technology platform to engage and send feedback to each other about access to and quality of health services at point of delivery.
Over 100 people are expected to be trained to become “platform champions” who will in turn provide training and guidance to other users of the platform.
Our innovative solution www.people4health.org is mainly to provide and share information on maternal and child health, family planning, reproductive health, malaria, water, sanitation and hygiene, nutrition and HIV/AIDS health service delivery at the district, regional and national levels. It is also to provide a non-human interface means of reporting cases of stigmatization and discrimination in receiving proper health care especially among key populations and people living with HIV/AIDS.
According to the Executive Director of Penplusbytes, Kwami Ahiabenu II, “The training is to equip users with basic knowledge on how the platform secures their anonymity whilst reporting cases; how it engages users and provides time-tested means of getting useful feedback and action for improved health services from the appropriate sources.”
He added that the technology is user friendly and is basic enough for every citizen to use with ease.
Following these trainings, Penplusbytes in partnership with the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) will appraise an existing online platform for reporting stigma and discrimination against people living with HIV/AIDS (PLHIV) and key populations (KPs). The platform will then be strengthened to improve its utilization by the target groups and will also be networked and aligned to the P4H platform.
This would help increase the capabilities of PLHIV and KPs to report and prevent stigma and discrimination.
The USAID “People for Health (P4H)” Project is being implemented in 20 districts in four regions of Ghana and seeks to strengthen organisational and institutional capacities of government and civil society organisations (CSOs) for mutual accountability in health, HIV, water, sanitation and hygiene, family planning and nutrition policy formulation and implementation.
The consortium’s emphasis on social accountability will increase CSO leadership capacity, mobilise communities and key populations to demand quality delivery of health programmes, promote accountability in the use of health resources and simultaneously maximise the responsiveness of health service providers. The project’s ultimate goal is to deliver tangible results in the improvement of health indicators and more importantly ensure inclusion of key populations.
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Penplusbytes is a not-for-profit organization driving change through innovations in three key areas: using new digital technologies to enable good governance and accountability, new media and innovations, and driving oversight for effective utilisation of mining, oil and gas revenue and resources.