Programme de bourses "Echanges Universitaires"

The Role of NGOs as Agents of Change in Health Development

Although NGO activity in Ghana can be traced to the charity and welfare oriented activities carried out by missionaries such as the Basel Mission, the prominence of NGOs in recent development discourse in Ghana, followed the introduction of The Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) of the IMF. Structural adjustment encouraged the roll back of the state and as such led to a huge gap in service delivery especially in the fields of health and education. The World Bank and other donor agencies thus funded NGOs under PAMSCAD (Programme of Actions to Mitigate the Social Costs of Adjustment) to fill the development gaps. The number of NGOs in the health sector further multiplied in the late 1980s as a result of the HIV/AIDS menace. Since Ghana's adoption of multi party democracy in 1992, civil society has increased in strength, due to the liberalisation of the airwaves, a lively independent press, invigorated professional bodies, and various church groups.

NGOs as part of a growing civil society are being encouraged to move on from welfare and relief provision, to local self reliance activities aimed at capacity building and empowerment strategies, in order to sustain their benefits beyond the period of assistance. For NGOs in the health sector an important way to do this is to strengthen community participation, which is vital in improving healthcare, especially in Africa and for that matter Ghana where the populations suffers from mostly preventable diseases. The research is to monitor the views of health related NGOs in the Asante Akyem district on community participation; to identify individuals, groups and projects active in health delivery as well as policy formulation; and investigate the ways how these groups or individuals participate in health service delivery or policy formulation.

The area of study,the Asante-Akyem North district in the Ashanti Region of Ghana, a rural area east of Kumasi, was selected for the study to be complementary to the SNF research project, “History of Health Systems in Sub-Saharan Africa” (HHSA) at the Centre for African Studies Basel, which is run jointly by the History Department and the Institute of Social Anthropology at the University of Basel, as well as the Swiss Tropical Institute. The research has been designed in collaboration with the Sociology Department of the University of Ghana to help strengthen its links with the Centre of African Studies of the University of Basel.

Contact

Yakubu Ismaila
33 Mittlere Strasse
CH-4056, Basel
E- mail y.ismaila@stud.unibas.ch

Supervisor:
Prof Dr Brigit Obrist
Institute of Social Anthropology
University of Basel
Münsterplatz 19
CH-4051, Basel
E- mail: brigit.obrist@unibas.ch

and

Swiss Tropical Institute
Department of Public Healh
Socinstrasse 57, Postfach
CH-4002 Basel

Advisor:

Prof Kodjo Senah, PhD
Sociology Department
University of Ghana
P. O. Box LG 65
Legon, Ghana
E-mail: kamesenah@yahoo.co.uk