Overview

The Sissala East Municipality is one of the eleven administrative districts in the Upper West Region. The district was carved out of the old Sissala district in 2005 by the government for effective governance and decentralization. The municipality has a total land size of 4,990 km2 representing about 26% of the total landmass of the region.

It has a total population of 86,311 projected from the 2021 population and housing census with a population density of 17.2/km2 denoting a vast land with few settlement and people. This attribute hugely impacts on service delivery.

There are sixty-two communities with sixty-four health facilities comprising of a hospital, polyclinic, eight health centres, fifty-four functional Community-based Health Planning and Service (CHPS) with four private facilities.

Staff population stands at a little over 500 with the various staff mix of technical and support staff. The Municipal Health Directorate has nine administrative units that is into Administration, Disease surveillance, Nutrition, Reproductive and Child Health, Health Promotion and Support Services.

The vision of the municipality is to be a Municipality of excellence for quality healthcare services that is universally acceptable and accessible to the people. We are currently working with a theme for this year as “Fostering Collaboration: Engaging Stakeholders in reducing maternal and perinatal mortalities through a resilient healthcare system”.

Map of the District

The municipal is confronted with many challenges affecting health service delivery. Few of these include;

• The Municipal hospital runs on an outmoded, x-ray machine that produces poor quality imaging. Hence most clients requiring x-rays services are referred to neighbouring districts for such services
• The Hospital has no Mortuary and corpses stay over 24hours in undesignated areas in the hospital.
• Municipality unfortunately only has one laboratory out of eight health centres impeding clinical. Laboratory services play a critical role in disease diagnosis, monitoring, screening, prevention, treatment, blood transfusion safety, public health surveillance, and research within a district. Laboratory services are indispensable components of the healthcare system, supporting clinical decision-making, disease control efforts, and advancements in medical science. The

Outlook for the Municipality include;

• To increase geographical access to health services by establishing more CHPS zones
• To strengthen and promote the provision of public health activities (Reproductive and Child
• Health, Disease Surveillance, Nutrition, Mental Health, Health Promotion etc)
• To ensure judicious use of resources to achieve optimal results with the available resources
• To undertake quarterly supportive supervision to all facilities
• To hold weekly and monthly management meetings at all levels
• To produce quality data for effective planning and decision making
• To mobilize additional resources for service delivery through advocacy and proposal writing
• To have assigned technical staff undertaking monthly technical support visits to facilities
• To hold biannual stakeholder engagement on service delivery
• To provide monthly performance feedback to facilities
• To ensure continuous training and capacity building in all service delivery areas including documentation and data management at sub-municipal level
• To liaise and engage Municipal Assembly, Member of Parliament, communities to improve on infrastructure especially construction of new staff accommodation and or rehabilitation of dilapidated facilities
• To lobby with Municipal Assembly and other partners to improve the equipment gaps in most facilities