Tanzania-Ghana Health Partnership

Tanzania and Ghana are at the forefront of health development in sub-Saharan Africa. Tanzania is on target to achieve the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of reducing childhood mortality by two thirds from 1990 to 2015. Although these two countries have demonstrated successful health systems development and have been highly lauded within the international development community, a variety of bottlenecks have prevented their programs - as well as other proven, low-cost interventions - from realizing their full potential. These bottlenecks include problems with manpower, communications, logistics, resources, and leadership.

The Tanzania-Ghana Health Partnership will demonstrate the feasibility and impact of assembling and implementing a comprehensive package of proven interventions for strengthening health systems in Ghana and Tanzania. The project will also add components that are missing from existing health systems in order to develop a new and cost-effective paradigm for health system development across national borders. In preparation for this work, we will implement a six-month planning process to:

Conduct rapid strategic appraisals to diagnose elements of health systems that require intervention and development in five districts in Ghana and three in Tanzania;
Assess the feasibility of assembling tools and innovations in project districts for the purpose of extending access to health technologies and services; and
Review lessons from past strategies for scaling up innovation and develop project plans for fostering the continuous utilization of system innovations, technologies, and capabilities as they emerge.

Through such efforts, the planning process will develop a proposal for promoting total “Health Systems Development” in Ghana and Tanzania using a framework created by the World Health Organization. In Tanzania, the project will build new capabilities into the country’s existing EMPOWER initiative, which mobilizes health system strengthening at all points of care, while also integrating Ghana’s strategies for providing community-based health services.

In Ghana, the project will add Tanzania’s systems for strengthening the management of district-level health systems into its existing Community-based Health Planning and Services (CHPS) programming in order to accelerate the scale up of such programs. This program will be known as the Ghana Essential Health Interventions Program. All of these planning efforts will be coordinated between the two countries in order to foster the sharing and transfer of information, strategies, plans, and research.

The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation’s (DDCF) African Health Initiative selected the Mailman School as one of four research partnerships to design and implement large-scale primary healthcare programs in sub-Saharan Africa. The DDCF grant to the Mailman School in the amount of $14.7 million is for TGHP to develop an exchange of health system innovations between Tanzania and Ghana, two countries that are at the forefront of health development in sub-Saharan Africa.