The Ghana Health Service was established in 1996 to carry out national policies under the control of the Minister of Health. CRS Ghana collaborates with Ghana Health Services on two child survival projects which reach 232 communities in the three northern regions and the Neglected Tropical Disease project with 170 districts in the country.

Catholic Relief Services Ghana has a strong working relationship with the District Agricultural Development Units of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture and other government agencies such as the Savanna Agricultural Research Institute (Council for Scientific and Industrial Research). CRS Ghana has worked with Ministry of Food and Agriculture to expand our reach in providing extension technical services to farmers particularly in the three northern regions, where food insecurity is prevalent due to lack of technical support for poor farming communities.

CRS partners and collaborates with both local and international community development organizations on a wide of bilateral, multilateral and privately funded projects.

Since the early 1990s and until recently, Catholic Relief Services Ghana concentrated activities in the three northern regions (Northern, Upper West, and Upper East) of the country. In these regions most people depend on farming for their livelihood. However, because of a combination of natural disasters and conflicts, these regions are generally less developed and experience higher levels of poverty and hunger than other parts of the country.

In 2011 CRS Ghana implemented the Community Action for Promotion of Agriculture to Improve Nutrition (CAPAN) pilot project with private funding which provided follow-on support to bridge an identified gap in the CRS Ghana Community Initiative on Maternal Child and Newborn Survival (CIMACS) project implemented in the Upper East Region. CAPAN worked to effectively build on the success of the CIMACS project and sustain healthy births and exclusive breastfeeding. CAPAN provided education on the production, storage and consumption of nutritious foods needed to ensure maternal and child survival. The project targeted 100 households and 500 community members (made up of 80 percent women and children). Indirectly the project aimed to benefit 1,000 households reaching 5,000 community members. CRS Ghana worked with the Navrongo and Bolgatanga Diocesan Development Organization (DDO) of the Catholic Church, Ghana Health Service, and the Ministry of Food and Agriculture. CAPAN was implemented in four communities in the Upper East Region. CRS Ghana's Agriculture Program has strong working relationship with the DDOs, (particularly those in Northern Ghana) and their network of parishes, agents and volunteers. The CRS agriculture program also collaborates with other faith-based organizations in recognition of the shared fundamental human values.

CRS is also implementing activities to improve the capacity of 10,000 farmers in Ghana as a sub-grantee to the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture under the project Yam Improvement for Income and Food Security in West Africa. The project is being implemented in conjunction with the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, with technical support from the Crop Research Institute and the Savanna Agricultural Research Institute for the period of 2012-2015.

As part of this effort, CRS is developing and promoting technologies for enhanced seed yam production and development of seed growers as well as training entrepreneurs for commercial production of certified seed yams. These two key activities seek to contribute to the establishment of sustainable availability of high quality seed yam on a commercially viable basis in targeted areas with the aim of increasing production and output.

In response to the high rates of maternal, newborn and child mortality and morbidities in the Upper East Region, Catholic Relief Services Ghana, in collaboration with Ghana Health Service, the District Assemblies and the communities, designed the Community Initiative on Maternal, Child and Newborn Survival (CIMACS) Project. CIMACS was a three-year project with the goal of improving maternal, child and newborn health and thereby contributing to the reduction in maternal, newborn and child morbidity and mortality in the targeted communities.

The CIMACS project was implemented from 2009-2011 in 50 communities and 15 static health facilities across two contiguous rural districts of Talensi-Nabdam and Kasena-Nankana West in Upper East Region of Ghana.

The CIMACS project employed the positive deviance approach augmented by the community-based Pregnancy Surveillance and Education and Community Giant Score board strategy to achieve a sustainable increase in the demand for and use of maternal, newborn and child health services at both the health facility and community levels. These approaches also create health facility and community linkages through:

• Facility-based: working with the district and sub district static health facilities and outreach points to improve use and quality of service delivery for maternal, newborn and child health through the provision of logistics, equipment, training and supervision.
• Community-based: working in partnership with a cadre of community-based agents (Community Health Volunteers, Link Providers and Safe Motherhood and Newborn Care Committees) to improve demand for and use of facility-based maternal, newborn and child health services.

Successes gained from the CIMACS project transitioned to the current project, Encouraging Positive Practices to Improve Child Survival (EPPICS), which is being implemented by CRS Ghana in collaboration with Ghana Health Service and University for Development Studies. The goal of EPPICS is to contribute to sustainable maternal/newborn morbidity/mortality reduction in East Mamprusi District of Northern Region of Ghana by 2015. This project is funded by USAID for the period of 2011-2015.

EPPICS focuses on three technical intervention areas: Maternal and newborn care, nutrition and malaria. At the community and health facility levels, EPPICS works to:

• Scale-up promising community-led improvements in the use of maternal and child services
• Integrate minimum package of interventions at the household and health facilities such as Essential Newborn Care and Essential Nutrition Actions
• Scale-up a motivational community mobilization strategy using Healthy Mother and Newborn Committees, Positive Deviant Inquiry
• Build capacity of health staff and support with basic but essential medical logistics and equipment to improve upon quality service delivery, and
• Improve health worker-client communication and relationships for mutual benefits

CRS Ghana is also supporting Ghana Health Service to eliminate and control neglected tropical diseases by increasing national scale coverage for mass drug administrations of at-risk and eligible populations by increasing government capacity, commitment, coordination and leadership through the END in Africa project. This project is funded by USAID and implemented by CRS through a sub-award from FHI360 for the period of 2011-2013.

The project ensures government ownership, leadership, management and administration of the grant to accelerate the elimination and control of neglected tropical diseases in Ghana. The project goal is to improve the health and well-being of Ghanaians through the strengthening of the National Neglected Tropical Diseases Control Program to eliminate and control five key neglected tropical diseases (Schistosomiasis, LF, trachoma, STH and onchocerciasis).

CRS Ghana has traditionally supported Ghana's most vulnerable groups. CRS Ghana currently partners with the Department of Social Welfare, the Ghana Health Services, Catholic dioceses and hospitals and others to provide food to people with HIV, orphaned children, people who are mentally ill, the elderly and the disabled.

In Ghana, the HIV prevalence rate for adults is estimated at approximately three percent. While that rate is relatively lower than in many African countries, most people with HIV in Ghana are still unable to access medicine to treat the virus. Stigma is also high throughout the country, which means that people with HIV shy away from available services.

The Strengthening HIV and AIDS Response Partnership and Evidence-based Research Project, Catholic Relief Services Ghana's HIV and AIDS care and support project, focuses on providing dignified care to people with HIV. The project is primed by FHI360 with funding from USAID for the period of 2010-2013.

Volunteers visit patients in their homes, provide counseling, and help care for their children. They also discuss HIV with community members in an effort to minimize the social stigma of the virus.

Presently, Catholic Relief Services Ghana is implementing the Savings and Internal Lending Community program called Integrated Savings and Lending Training Action Research Project in the Wa diocese through funding from both CRS and private donors for the period of 2012-2013. The project empowers smallholder farmers to use financial resources generated through their savings groups to invest in farming, along with financial management education. Alongside the generation of financial resources, the Ministry of Food Agriculture provides extension services. Famers use the agricultural knowledge and skills they have acquired from the Ministry of Food Agriculture’s extension service and invest financial resources gained through the participation in the savings and lending groups to increase production.

Ghana had the second-highest number of cases of guinea worm in the world. In rural areas, toilets are scarce and many people don't even have access to latrines. In response, Catholic Relief Services Ghana has used private resources to meet water and sanitation needs, especially in the three northern regions. By helping communities build water facilities and household latrines, CRS Ghana has improved access to clean water and hygienic sanitation in more than 100 communities and has assisted in helping the country eliminate all cases of guinea worm.

CRS Ghana recently implemented The Global Water Initiative. The project aimed at ensuring that vulnerable populations in communities in Upper West Region have reliable access to water and sanitation in a way that will preserve their dignity, rights, culture, livelihoods and their natural environment. The project improved access to potable water and improves water and sanitation practices by drilling boreholes, constructing latrines, providing a school and community health education program to promote safe water handling and behavior change as well as engages in environmental regeneration and climate change adaptation. The project was implemented from 2008–2012 with the financial support of the Howard G. Buffet Foundation.

CRS Ghana worked through the schools in order to initiate good sanitation and hygiene behaviors at an early age through the Integrated Approach to Guinea Worm Eradication through Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene project. Funded by UNICEF from 2009-2012, the project was implemented in conjunction with the district assemblies and Ghana Education Service in 298 schools and communities in the 10 Guinea Worm endemic districts of the Northern Region. Strong behavior change messaging was directed at the school children and community members with a focus on key hygiene practices. The messaging and actions were eventually adopted and owned by the schools and surrounding communities to become an internally driven endeavor. The project supported behavior change with the provision of hand washing facilities and latrines. As a result of the Integrated Approach to Guinea Worm Eradication through Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene programming and other efforts, these districts are now free of Guinea Worm.

The CRS Water Access Now project has one simple mandate: ensure communities in Ghana have regular and equitable access to clean drinking water. The expression of solidarity of U.S. citizens has raised funds to compliment the work of CRS Ghana by providing 56 boreholes between 2007- 2012.