Samuel Asiedu Owusu

University of Cape Coast | UCC · Directorate of Research, Innovation and Consultancy

Global health efforts such as malarial control require efficient pharmaceutical supply chains to ensure effective delivery of quality-assured medicines to those who need them. However, very little is currently known about decision-making processes within antimalarial supply chains and potential vulnerabilities to substandard and falsified medicines...

Bioethics provides various models of fair allocation of scarce health resources like COVID-19 vaccines. Even though these models are grounded in some ethical principles like justice and beneficence, there were severe inequalities in global access to COVID-19 vaccines. In Ghana, about 21.5 million COVID-19-doses have been administered but comprise m...

The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have been far reaching across almost every sphere of life. Families, which are the basic units of society, have not been spared the ravages of the pandemic. Changes in family daily routines as a result of COVID-19 can affect spousal relationships, parenting and childcare practices. However, the extent to which t...

Background Informal mHealth is widely used by community health nurses in Ghana to extend healthcare delivery services to clients who otherwise might have been excluded from formal health systems or would experience significant barriers in their quest to access formal health services. The nurses use their private mobile phones or devices to make cal...

Apart from their potential environmental benefits, micromobility modes of transport can afford their users enormous health benefits. This notwithstanding, their adoption is very low or non-existent in most African cities including Ghana. The paucity of research on micromobility in Ghana restricts any objective discussions on the factors that contri...

There were eighteen Research Ethics Committees (RECs) operating in Ghana as of December 2019 but no empirical assessment of their operational characteristics had been conducted. We assessed the characteristics of Ghanaian RECs using an existing Self-Assessment Tool for RECs in Developing Countries. We present results from nine RECs that participate...

The use of mobile phones is fast transforming the healthcare delivery landscape in Ghana. A substantial number of health facilities are now dependent on mobile phones to facilitate their work. Evidence of the use of mobile phones in Ghana’s healthcare is however limited. In order to contribute to the evidence of the value of using mobile phones to...

Investigative journalists sometimes resort to the use of fake identities in order to reveal fakes and malpractice, a phenomenon that can be described as revelatory fakery. Acclaimed investigative journalist, Anas Aremeyaw, in collaboration with BBC Africa Eye, employs revelatory fakery to expose and prosecute wrongdoers in Ghana. From an ethical vi...

Background The COVID-19 pandemic and control measures adopted by countries globally can lead to stress and anxiety. Investigating the coping strategies to this unprecedented crisis is essential to guide mental health intervention and public health policy. This study examined how people are coping with the COVID-19 crisis in Ghana and identify facto...

Abstract Background The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has been associated with several adverse health outcomes. However, few studies in sub-Saharan Africa have examined its deleterious consequences on mental health. Therefore, we investigated the prevalence and changes in boredom, anxiety and psychological well-being before and during the COVID...

The extraordinary global growth of digital connectivity has generated optimism that mobile technologies can help overcome infrastructural barriers to development, with ‘mobile health’ (mhealth) being a key component of this. However, while ‘formal’ (top-down) mhealth programmes continue to face challenges of scalability and sustainability, we know...

While mobile phones promise to be an important tool for bridging the healthcare gaps in resource-poor areas in developing countries, scalability and sustainability of mobile phones for health (mhealth) interventions still remain a major challenge. Meanwhile, health workers are already using their own mobile phones (referred to as ‘informal mhealth’...

COVID-19 is an active pandemic that likely poses an existential threat to humanity. Frequent handwashing, social distancing, and partial or total lockdowns are among the suite of measures prescribed by the World Health Organization (WHO) and being implemented across the world to contain the pandemic. However, existing inequalities in access to cert...

This exploratory study aimed to assess reciprocity qualities in childcare and likely influences on child health outcomes. Informants were 83 child caregivers from the Kumasi metropolis of Ghana. Of these, 56 individual maternal (n = 28) and non-maternal child caregivers (n = 28) completed in-depth individual interviews. Another 23 participated comp...

As work practices and living arrangements change, many mothers, who are often primary child caregivers, have to make some decisions as they try to balance childcare with paid work. Increasingly, childcare is shared between parents and other caregivers. However, little is known, especially in Ghana, about the childcare practices of mothers and house...

The report concludes that Ghana’s urban sprawl is not matched by a corresponding improvement in its transport system and therefore. With an over-reliance on road transport system and a limited mass public transport infrastructure to support the mobility of its citizenry, access and transport needs of its vulnerable population is restricted to a lar...

Data from qualitative and survey research with young people in 24 locations (urban and rural) across Ghana, Malawi, and South Africa expose the complex interplay between phone ownership and usage, female empowerment, and chronic poverty in Africa. We consider gendered patterns of phone ownership and use before examining practices of use in educatio...

There is a long history of migration among low-income families in sub-Saharan Africa, in which (usually young, often male) members leave home to seek their fortune in what are perceived to be more favourable locations. While the physical and virtual mobility practices of such stretched families are often complex and contingent, maintaining contact...

Issues surrounding youth employment and unemployment are central to the next development decade. Understanding how youth use mobile phones as a means of communicating and exchanging information about employment and livelihoods is particularly important given the prominence of mobile phone use in young lives. This paper explores and reflects on yout...

While awareness of HIV and AIDS is near universal in Ghana, the same cannot be said of the prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) of the disease. This paper assesses the level of knowledge, barriers and attitudes towards PMTCT of HIV/AIDS among pregnant women, partners of pregnant women and people living with HIV (PLHIV). Data were gath...

Antiretroviral therapy (ART) is one of the interventions meant to prolong the progression from HIV to AIDS for People Living with HIV (PLHIVs). Although ART was introduced in Ghana in 2003, there is little or no information about the preferences of those on ART services. The main objective of the study therefore was to examine the preferences of PL...

Africa’s recent communications ‘revolution’ has generated optimism that using mobile phones for health (mhealth) can help bridge healthcare gaps, particularly for rural, hard-to-reach populations. However, while scale-up of mhealth pilots remains limited, health-workers across the continent possess mobile phones. This article draws on interviews fr...

Cell phones present new forms of sociality and new possibilities of encounter for young people across the globe. Nowhere is this more evident than in sub-Saharan Africa where the scale of usage, even among the very poor, is remarkable. In this paper we reflect on the inter-generational encounters which are embedded in young people’s cell phone inte...

The African communications 'revolution' has generated optimism that mobile phones might help overcome infrastructural barriers to healthcare provision in resource-poor contexts. However, while formal m-health programmes remain limited in coverage and scope, young people are using mobile phones creatively and strategically in an attempt to secure ef...

In Ghana, it was estimated in 2013 that some 34,557 children were living with HIV and AIDS. Researches on children’s perception of risk, knowledge and support services for infected persons have been rarely undertaken. This paper is based on responses obtained from 120 in-school children aged 9-13 years drawn from three schools in the Cape Coast Met...

Many Sub Saharan African countries still have dire transport needs. Children in particular are faced with mobility constraints in their quest to access, education, health and recreation. This study investigated the ownership and use of bicycles among children in Rural Ghana. The study was conducted in six rural communities within two ecological zon...

Children are increasingly engaged in the research process as generators of knowledge, but little is known about the impacts on children's lives, especially in the longer term. As part of a study on children's mobility in Ghana, Malawi and South Africa, 70 child researchers received training to conduct peer research in their own communities. Evaluat...

Across contemporary Africa, pluralistic medical fields are becoming increasingly complex, giving rise to newly emerging constellations of healing practices and a vast array of therapeutic possibilities. We present portraits of four 'traditional' healers in southern Ghana who selectively adapt, adopt, and modify elements of biomedical, 'local,' and...

This was an exploratory study on how dressmakers and hairdressers in the Assin South District of Ghana receive education on sexual and reproductive health. The respondents comprised mainly of full time female dressmakers and hairdressers as well as their apprentices (aged between 15 and 35 years, had attained basic education and were never married)...

This paper examines the gendered implications of Africa's transport gap (the lack of cheap, regular and reliable transport) for young people in rural Ghana, with particular reference to the linkages between restricted mobility, household work demands, access to education and livelihood potential. Our aim is to show how mobility constraints, especia...

Goal 4 of the UN Millennium Development Goals seeks to “reduce child mortality” and targets a reduction of child mortality rate among children under five years. Although some significant achievements have been made by some countries in this direction, it is estimated that more than 9 million children under the age of five die every year worldwide;...

Background: Children in most Sub-Saharan African countries are faced with severe mobility constraints in their quest to access schools, health care and other places important to their well-being. Although bicycles apparently offer possible solutions to these problems as a relatively low-cost, Non-Motorised Transport (NMT), the potential of bicycles...