Health status and link with access to health service

The 2008 Ghana Demographic and Health survey (GDHS) shows that out of every 100 children born alive, four die before they are one year old.
That statistics, compared to the situation in the developed world where only one child die out of every 100 children born alive, is said to be on the high side.
However, the Greater Accra Regional Director of Health Services, Professor Irene Agyepong Amarteyfio, has indicated that this is an improvement on the rates of about six deaths out of every 100 in 2003 and seven every 100 in 1993 as depicted in various surveys.
Writing under the topic, “Health status and health service access”, which was contained in a document presented to the Daily Graphic, Professor Agyepong Amarteyfio, however, explained that “we are still a long way from where we want to be”.
She said unlike in Ghana where about four children died before they attained one year, less than one child died before the first year of life for every 100 children born alive in the developed world.
She reiterated that malaria remained the most frequently reported cause of illness and a major cause of childhood deaths. She pointed out that other frequently reported diseases which affected Ghanaians were diarrhoea, acute respiratory infections, skin diseases, pregnancy-related complications, anaemia and malnutrition.
In addition, she said the most common chronic diseases in Ghana were hypertension and diabetes and pointed out that one of the objectives of Ghana’s health sector reforms initiated in 1997 was to increase geographical access to basic clinical and public health services.
Touching on access to health care, she said in the 2003 Core Welfare Indicators Questionnaire (CWIQ) survey, access to clinical services was defined as living within any kind of modern health facility that could be reached within 30 minutes.
She stated that between the 1997 and 2003 CWIQ survey, the percentage of people stating that they had access to a health facility increased from 37 per cent to 58 per cent, while those reporting themselves as sick or injured in the four weeks before the survey and needing clinical services remained constant at 18 per cent.
Professor Agyepong Amarteyfio indicated that the reported use of care fell from 22 per cent in the 1997 survey to 18 per cent in the 2003 survey, raising questions as to whether quality of care and ability to pay may sometimes be more important barriers than geographic access.