Anthony OfosuGhana Health Service · Office of the DIrector-General
Anthony Ofosu
MBChB , MPH, FGPS, Msc (Epid) DTMH.
Currently the Deputy Director-General of the Ghana Health Service.
About
64
Publications
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Introduction
Rapid assessment for continuity of essential services amidst COVID 19
Additional affiliations
September 2019 - August 2020
April 2010 - September 2019
Publications
Publications (64)
Background: To improve access to appropriate eye health care services within the community health structures in Ghana, pre- and post-intervention studies were carried out to explore the feasibility of integrating primary eye health into the community health planning services programme.Aim: To explore the feasibility, accessibility and acceptability...
Background
One of the key targets of Ghana’s Adolescent Health Service Policy and Strategy is to ensure that 90% of adolescents and young people have knowledge of sexual and reproductive health services and rights. This phenomenon has led to the establishment of adolescent-friendly health facilities to increase access to health information and serv...
Introduction:The rate of caesarean section (C-section) deliveries has been increasing globally, including in low- and middle-income countries like Ghana. Understanding the trends, patterns, and socio-demographic determinants of C-section deliveries is crucial for improving maternal healthcare services and reducing unnecessary surgical interventions...
Background:
During and after the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic, many countries experienced declines in immunization that have not fully recovered to pre-pandemic levels. This study uses routine health facility immunization data to estimate variability between and within countries in post-pandemic immunization service recovery for BCG, DPT1, and D...
eHealth is making a growing impact to the delivery of health quality care, and strengthening health system with efficient, resilient applications more responsive to patient’s needs and expectations. The BETTEReHEALTH project assesses the human, technical and public policy factors from four African countries, Ghana. Ethiopia, Tunisia and Malawi, to...
Relevant persons or organizations with a vested interest in a country’s eHealth policy, strategy, legislation, or eHealth environment can be considered stakeholders of eHealth. These stakeholders could affect or be affected by eHealth policies and, in one way or another, influence eHealth development and implementation. This study aimed to identify...
Ensuring the sub national level in the health system can function effectively is central to attainment of health results in countries. However, the current health agenda has not prioritized how districts can deploy their existing resources effectively, to maximize the efficiency equity and effectiveness in their use. Ghana initiated a self-assessme...
Objective We explored and document healthcare workers’ (HCWs’) perspectives on the challenges encountered during obstetric referrals.
Design The study adopted a qualitative research approach and a descriptive phenomenology design. HCWs permanently working in 16 rural healthcare facilities in the Sene East and West Districts composed of the target...
Background
Obstetric referrals thrive on rapid transfer of information and data, and effective communication in order to reduce delays in receiving of quality care once the woman reaches the facility. We explored health care workers’ perception of the feasibility and acceptance of WhatsApp messaging technology to facilitate obstetric referrals in s...
Introduction: Few studies examined the association between prenatal long-term ambient temperature exposure
and stillbirth and fewer still from developing countries. Rather than ambient temperature, we used a human
thermophysiological index, Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI) to investigate the role of long-term heat
stress exposure on stillbirt...
Background. *e COVID-19 pandemic and government-led interventions to tackle it have had life-changing e2ects on vulnerable
populations, especially rural and urban slum dwellers in developing countries. *is ethnographic study explored how the
Ghanaian government’s management of COVID-19, socio-cultural factors, infrastructural challenges, and povert...
Objectives
To investigate how the quality of maternal health services and travel times to health facilities affect birthing service utilisation in Eastern Region, Ghana.
Design
The study is a cross-sectional spatial interaction analysis of birth service utilisation patterns. Routine birth data were spatially linked to quality care, service deman...
Objective: Ghana has made significant progress in its efforts to control Human Immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infections, however 31% of HIV exposed infants received early infant diagnosis (EID) services. This paper examines the factors influencing EID service delivery in two high HIV burden districts in Ghana. Methodology: This study was conducted i...
p>Background: Floods are the most frequently occurring natural disaster and constitute a significant public health risk. Several operational satellite-based flood detection systems quantify flooding extent, but it is unclear how far the choice of satellite-based flood product affects the findings of epidemiological studies of associated public heal...
Background
Malaria in pregnancy control interventions have been implemented through antenatal care services for more than 2 decades in Ghana. The uptake of these interventions has seen steady improvement over the years. This has occurred within the context of decreasing global trends of malaria infection confirmed by decreasing malaria in pregnancy...
Background
Vaccine-preventable diseases (VPDs) persist globally with a disproportionately high burden in Low and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs). Although this might be partly due to the failure to sustain vaccination coverage above 90% in some WHO regions, a more nuanced understanding of VPD transmission beyond vaccination coverage may unveil othe...
Objectives: To explore governance, coordination and implementation actors, structures and processes, facilitators, and barriers within local government and between central and local government in Ghana’s COVID-19 response during the first wave of the outbreak.Design: Cross-sectional single case study. Data collection involved a desk review of media...
Background
Geographic barriers to healthcare are associated with adverse maternal health outcomes. Modelling travel times using georeferenced data is becoming common in quantifying physical access. Multiple Demographic and Health Surveys ask women about distance-related problems accessing healthcare, but responses have not been evaluated against mo...
Background
The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has had wide-reaching direct and indirect impacts on population health. In low- and middle-income countries, these impacts can halt progress toward reducing maternal and child mortality. This study estimates changes in health services utilization during the pandemic and the associated cons...
PURPOSE
The increasing cancer burden calls for reliable data on current and future associated hospitalizations to enable health care resource planning, especially in low- and middle-income countries. We provide nationwide estimates of the current and future burden of hospitalization because of neoplasms in Ghana.
METHODS
We conducted secondary dat...
Background
Vulnerable populations such as rural and urban-slum dwellers are more likely to suffer greatly from the deleterious effects of the novel Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). However, in Ghana, most COVID-19 mitigating packages are not focused on vulnerable populations.
Methods
Concurrent mixed methods design was used to examine the soci...
Objectives: To investigate factors contributing to neonatal admission outcomes at Effia Nkwanta Regional Hospital (ENRH)Method: All neonatal admissions to the Neonatal & Intensive Care Unit (NICU) of the hospital that were entered into the DHIMS2 database were extracted and complemented with additional information from patients’ folder review. The...
Health service areas are essential for planning, policy and managing public health interventions. In this study, we delineate health service areas from routinely collected health data as a robust geographic basis for presenting access to maternal care indicators.
A zone design algorithm was adapted to delineate health service areas through a cross...
As societies urbanize, their populations have become increasingly dependent on the private sector for essential services. The way the private sector responds to health emergencies such as the COVID-19 pandemic can determine the health and economic wellbeing of urban populations, an effect amplified for poorer communities. Here we present a qualitat...
Background
Poor communication on sexual issues between adolescents and their parents results in high rates of negative sexual practices such as teenage pregnancy. Contributing factors to this poor communication on sexual issues between adolescents and their parents in a high teenage pregnancy setting have not been adequately explored. We sought to...
Background: Poor sexual communication between adolescents and their parents results in high rates of negative sexual practices such as teenage pregnancy. Contributing factors to this poor sexual communication between adolescent and their parents in a high teenage pregnancy setting have not been adequately explored. We sought to fill this gap by exa...
Background
This study explores sociodemographic and health factors associated with hospitalizing diabetes mellitus (DM) patients and estimates the number of future hospitalizations for DM in Ghana.
Methods
We conducted a secondary analysis using nationally representative patient hospitalization data provided by the Ghana Health Service and project...
Objective
Data on asthma hospitalisations are a useful source of patient morbidity information. In Ghana, the length of stay (LoS) and sociodemographic factors of patients hospitalised for asthma and its exacerbation are understudied. We aimed to investigate the time to discharge and assessed factors associated with length of hospital stays of asth...
Objective
Patients with sickle cell disease (SCD) are prone to multiple episodes resulting in frequent hospital visits. We determined the time trends, sociodemographic and health factors associated with length of stay (LoS) for patients with SCD in Ghana.
Design, participants, setting
We retrospectively analysed SCD hospitalisation records of 22 6...
Background
The epidemiological transition, touted as occurring in Ghana, requires research that tracks the changing patterns of diseases in order to capture the trend and improve healthcare delivery. This study examines national trends in mortality rate and cause of death at health facilities in Ghana between 2014 and 2018.
Methods
Institutional m...
Introduction:
COVID-19 is a global pandemic seen in modern times. The clinical characteristics, treatment regimen and duration of hospitalization of COVID-19 patients remain unclear in Ghana.
Methods:
we retrospectively reviewed the secondary data of 307 discharged COVID-19 patients to characterize their demographics, clinical symptoms, treatmen...
Importance
Recent reports have highlighted that expanding access to health care is ineffective at meeting the goal of universal health coverage if the care offered does not meet a minimum level of quality. Health care facilities nearest to patient’s homes that are perceived to offer inadequate or inappropriate care are frequently bypassed in favor...
Ghana has been implementing the indoor residual spraying (IRS) of insecticides since 2006, focusing operations in the north. Insecticide resistance concerns prompted a switch from pyrethroids to organophosphates, beginning gradually in 2011 and switching fully to the micro-encapsulated formulation of pirimiphosmethyl (PM CS), Actellic® 300CS, a thi...
Introduction
Person-centredness, including patient experience and satisfaction, is a foundational element of quality of care. Evidence indicates that poor experience and satisfaction are drivers of underutilisation of healthcare services, which in turn is a major driver of avoidable mortality. However, there is limited information about patient exp...
High-performing primary health care (PHC) is essential for achieving universal health coverage. However, in many countries, PHC is weak and unable to deliver on its potential. Improvement is often limited by a lack of actionable data to inform policies and set priorities. To address this gap, the Primary Health Care Performance Initiative (PHCPI) w...
Schistosomiasis control in sub-Saharan Africa is enacted primarily through preventive chemotherapy. Predictive models can play an important role in filling knowledge gaps in the distribution of the disease and help guide the allocation of limited resources. Previous modeling approaches have used localized cross-sectional survey data and environment...
Objectives
Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals will require data-driven public health action. There are limited publications on national health information systems that continuously generate health data. Given the need to develop these systems, we summarised their current status in low-income and middle-income countries.
Setting
The survey...
Understanding the spatially varying effects of demographic factors on the spatio-temporal variation of intestinal parasites infections is important for public health intervention and monitoring. This paper presents a hierarchical Bayesian spatially varying coefficient model to evaluate the effects demographic factors on intestinal parasites morbidi...
Understanding the spatially varying effects of demographic factors on the spatio-temporal variation of intestinal parasites infections is important for public health intervention and monitoring. This paper presents a hierarchical Bayesian spatially varying coefficient model to evaluate the effects demographic factors on intestinal parasites morbidi...
Background: To improve access to comprehensive eye health services within the community, an intervention study that sought to integrate primary eye care (PEC) into existing primary health care (PHC) services, namely Community-based Health Planning and Services (CHPS), was conducted.
Aim: To improve access to eye health at community level.
Setting...
Background:
Hypertension remains a cause of morbidity and mortality in the Ashanti Region of Ghana. It has been featured in the top ten causes of OPD attendance, admissions, and deaths since 2012. We investigated the sociodemographic characteristics and spatial distribution of inpatient hypertensives and factors associated with their admission out...
90% of the worldwide schistosomiasis burden falls on sub-Saharan Africa. Control efforts are often based on infrequent, small-scale health surveys, which are expensive and logistically difficult to conduct. Use of satellite imagery to predictively model infectious disease transmission has great potential for public health applications. Transmission...
Objective:
To examine the feasibility and effectiveness of community-based maternal mortality surveillance in rural Ghana, where most information on maternal deaths usually comes from retrospective surveys and hospital records.
Methods:
In 2013, community-based surveillance volunteers used a modified reproductive age mortality survey (RAMOS 4+2)...
Abstract
Importance: Conditions that can be treated by surgery comprise more than 16% of the global disease burden. However, 5 billion people do not have access to essential surgical care. An estimated 90% of the 87 million disability-adjusted life-years incurred by surgical conditions could be averted by providing access to timely and safe surgery...
Background and Purpose: The Ghana Health Service (GHS) in 2012 embarked on an ambitious programme to improve its health information system (HIS) in order to improve upon healthcare delivery and also to meet the health related millennium development goals (MDGs). This resulted in nationwide implementation of the District Health Information Managemen...
Abstract: Ghana has been institutionalizing a set of coordinated mechanisms to measure and monitor progress in health coverage. These periodic assessments have over time shown significant country progress towards achieving a fifty-percent reduction in childhood morality rate by 2015 and a two-thirds reduction in maternal deaths within the same peri...
Objective:
To assess anemia prevalence and identify associated parameters in children <3 years of age in a rural area of Ghana.
Method:
Univariate and multivariate logistic regression of cross-sectional survey results from 861 children aged <3 years attending routine immunization services in Berekum district.
Results:
Anemia prevalence was 73....
The Pocket Digital Assistant (PDA) EPI data capture project in the Sene District was started in 2004 as a collaborative work between the Berekum Health Directorate initially and later Sene District Health Directorate and Access to Health an NGO from the United states .The aim of the project is to use information technology to improve service delive...
Background
During the 1990s, researchers at the Navrongo Health Research Centre in northern Ghana developed a highly successful community health program. The keystone of the Navrongo approach was the deployment of nurses termed community health officers to village locations. A trial showed that, compared to areas relying on existing services alone,...
In many of the world's least developed nations, economic and social constraints, inadequate educational opportunities, and poor roads and scarcity of transport make it difficult for pregnant women to receive proper healthcare in rural settings. The specific goal of this design project is to develop an easily assembled portable gynecological exam ta...
To investigate the identification of maternal deaths at the community level using the reproductive age mortality survey (RAMOS) in all households in which a women of reproductive age (WRA) died and to determine the most concise subset of questions for identifying a pregnancy-related death for further investigation.
A full RAMOS survey was conducted...
Postpartum hemorrhage (PPH) is the leading cause of maternal mortality in Africa and Asia. Despite an UN Millennium Development Goal to reduce maternal mortality rates, no significant effect has resulted to date, in large part because women in these areas give birth in rural communities with poor access to definitive care. Traditional birth attenda...
There are currently an estimated 10-12 million cases of leprosy in the world. In Sene District of the Brong Ahafo Region of Ghana the prevalence of leprosy is 2.4/10,000 of the population. Most of these cases are children, indicating that new infections are still occurring in the communities.
To identify factors associated with leprosy in the Sene...
West African-trained physicians have been migrating from the sub-continent to rich countries, primarily the US and the UK, since medical education began in Nigeria and Ghana in the 1960s. In 2003, we visited six medical schools in West Africa to investigate the magnitude, causes and consequences of the migration. We conducted interviews and focus g...
IntroductionInjury is a significant health problem in many less developed countries. However, strategies for dealing with it have been only minimally addressed.GoalsWe ought to assess the pattern of health care utilization by injured persons in rural Ghana. We thus hoped to provide data that would assist in strengthening injury treatment in this se...