Accelerating Millennium Development Goal Progress by Exchanging Health System Innovations between Tanzania and Ghana

Tanzania is the first African country to be on target for achieving Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 4. This success followed the demonstration by the Tanzania Essential Health Interventions Project (TEHIP) that evidence-based healthcare resource allocation could enable district health system managers to prioritize services according to the pattern of the burden of disease. In Ghana, the Navrongo Experiment achieved equivalent success by mobilizing rural villages to develop systems for stationing community nursing in villages and sustaining their work. In response, the Ghana government launched the Community-based Health Planning and Services (CHPS) Initiative to scale up the approach. Despite these successes, a variety of service delivery, manpower, communication, logistics, resource management, and leadership bottlenecks have prevented these programs from realizing their full potential. A partnership between the two countries seeks to address these bottlenecks through exchanging innovations: Ghana's CHPS strategies will be adapted for Tanzania, and Ghana will incorporate Tanzania's systems for district-level planning into its district programming. Evaluation will assess the MDG impact of assembling a comprehensive package of proven interventions for strengthening health systems. This international collaboration will demonstrate a new paradigm for African countries to assist one another with achieving the health MDGs.