COVID-19 RESPONSE AND INSTITUTIONAL CAPACITY BUILDING (CRIB) PROJECT
Brief about the CRIB Project
The COVID-19 Response and Institutional Capacity Building (CRIB) Project, is a 2-year project by CHAG sponsored by FCDO in 40 districts where CHAG facilities are district hospitals. The project seeks to support the Government of Ghana’s response to Covid-19 in strengthening Ghana’s Health Systems to maintain the delivery of essential healthcare services and mobilize all available resources for Covid-19 response actions.
The project is helping to answer the question: “how do we build the capacity of key institutions like CHAG to assist/complement government to maintain the delivery of essential healthcare services across the continuum of care and avoid the risk of an outbreak of other communicable and preventable diseases, delays in seeking care and deteriorating quality of care, while at the same time responding to the Covid-19 pandemic cases?”.
Project Objectives
The specific objectives of the CRIB project are:
- To support National Response to COVID-19
- To build institutional capacity to support the continuation of basic healthcare services.
- To monitor and evaluate the impact of Covid-19 on health service delivery and share lessons learned on implementing Covid-19 response measures
In supporting the national response to COVID-19, the project is increasing access to COVID-19 services and reducing risk behaviors through the following:
- Expanding COVID-19 testing to the district level
- Screening & triaging all clients at the point of entry to health facilities
- Contact tracing
- Case management (including the establishment of 3 High Dependency Units in 3 zones)
- Risk communication at the district, sub-district and remote community areas where such communication being carried out at the national level on TV and radio is inaccessible due to non-access to these media.
The Institutional Capacity Building aspect of the CRIB project is ensuring sustained delivery of essential and basic health services, increased interactions and coordinated actions with the Ghana Health Service and community systems at the district and sub-district levels, and capacity development of CHAG institutions particularly at the lower levels for sustained health services delivery. These are achieved through the following:
- Quality improvement training
- Reliable health data/health information capture for improved management decision
- Enhancing financial management at the facility level
- Improving supply chain for medicines and health commodities
In evaluating the impact of COVID-19 on health services delivery, the project is undertaking the following:
- Documenting lessons on COVID-19 through newsletters, social media, and research
- Sharing lessons and creating platforms for experiential learning across CHAG facilities in all 16 regions and 188 districts.
The implementation arrangement has three levels: national, district and facility level structures. The national level structures include a steering committee with wider stakeholders, technical committee, and project team. The district level structure is called District Executive Platform and comprises the District Director of Health Services, Disease Control Officer, the District Chief Executive (or his nominee), the District Coordinating Director, the Medical Superintendent and his administrator, and other key opinion leaders in the town. At the facility level, each of the 40 sites has a 5–10-member CRIB team some of which are COVID-19 response teams.
All 40 implementing sites are supported with PPEs and capacity building for the staff which is all sponsored by the FCDO.