Ghanaian views of short-term medical missions: The pros, the cons, and the possibilities for improvement.

BACKGROUND: Various governments in Ghana have tried to improve healthcare in the country. Despite these efforts, meeting health care needs is a growing concern to government and their citizens. Short term medical missions from other countries are one of the responses to meet the challenges of healthcare delivery in Ghana. This research aimed to understand Ghanaian perceptions of short-term missions from the narratives of host country staff involved. The study from which this paper is developed used a qualitative design, which combined a case study approach and political economy analysis involving in-depth interviews with 28 participants. RESULT: Findings show short term medical mission programs in Ghana were largely undertaken in rural communities to address shortfalls in healthcare provision to these areas. The programs were often delivered free and were highly appreciated by communities and host institutions. While the contributions of STMM to health service provision have been noted, there were challenges associated with how they operated. The study found concerns over language and how volunteers effectively interacted with communities. Other identified challenges were the extent to which volunteers undermined local expertise, using fraudulent qualifications by some volunteers, and poor skills and lack of experience leading to wrong diagnoses sometimes. The study found a lack of awareness of rules requiring the registration of practitioners with national professional regulatory bodies, suggesting non enforcement of volunteers' need for local certification. CONCLUSION: Short Term Medical Missions appear to contribute to addressing some of the critical gaps in healthcare delivery. However, there is an urgent need to address the challenges of ineffective utilisation and lack of oversight of these programs to maximise their benefits.

Global Health Partnerships and the Brocher Declaration: Principles for Ethical Short-Term Engagements in Global Health.

Short- term experiences in global health (STEGH), also known as short-term medical missions continue to be a popular mode of engagement in global health activities for students, healthcare providers, and religious groups, driven primarily by organizations from high-income countries. While STEGH have the potential to be beneficial, a large proportion of these do not sustainably benefit the communities they intend to serve, may undermine local health systems, operate without appropriate licenses, go beyond their intended purposes, and may cause harm to patients. With heightened calls to "decolonize" global health, and to achieve ethical, sustainable, and practical engagements, there is a need to establish strong guiding principles for global health engagements. The Advocacy for Global Health Partnerships (AGHP), a multi-sectoral coalition, was established to reflect on and address the concerns relating to STEGH. Towards this end, AGHP created the Brocher Declaration to lay out six main principles that should guide ethical and appropriate STEGH practices. A variety of organizations have accepted the Declaration and are using it to provide guidance for effective implementation of appropriate global health efforts. The Declaration joins broader efforts to promote equity in global health and a critical reevaluation of volunteer-centric, charity-based missions. The current state of the world's health demands a new model of collaboration - one that sparks deep discussions of shared innovation and builds ethical partnerships to address pressing issues in global health.