Ghana

Expanding Access to Care

To ensure that every child has access to care close to home, we equip the providers within our patients’ communities with skills and resources to deliver high quality care. We build the needed capacity by harnessing the talent and resources that exist within the country, usually in the bigger cities, the hubs, to train providers in under-resourced areas, the spokes, where most patients lack access to care.​

Korle Bu Teaching Hospital in Accra is Ghana’s largest teaching hospital and serves as Operation Smile’s hub. Here we bring together faculty from Ghana and internationally to provide specialized cleft training. ​

Our spokes, located in Koforidua, Cape Coast and Ho are regional hospitals where we will train surgical teams and establish ongoing cleft surgery sites.

Five-Year Vision

Within the next five years, Operation Smile will work to reduce barriers to accessing cleft care and increase the quality and quantity of healthcare providers in Ghana. ​

Operation Smile will provide surgical care for over 2,700 patients. We will deliver consultations for around 4,620 patients, increasing access to comprehensive cleft care. ​

Operation Smile will partner with four hospitals to establish ongoing cleft programs. To achieve this, we will support the teaching capacity in Accra to train providers from hospitals in three regions and enable these hospitals to deliver quality care for their own communities. We will work to expand plastic surgical capacity beyond the capital city.​

We will ensure that our spoke hospitals in Ghana are supplied with appropriate equipment required for comprehensive cleft care services through infrastructure and equipment investment at all three spoke sites. ​

Operation Smile will advocate for the development of a national cleft care protocol. We will continue to partner with local organizations to conduct surgical and cleft research. The research findings will help improve the quality of comprehensive cleft care in Ghana. ​

Our Partners

Operation Smile’s programs in Ghana have been made possible by close collaboration with the University of Ghana, the Ministry of Health and the Ghana Health Service.​

With support from Operation Smile, the National Surgery and Anaesthesia Plan (NSOAP) was signed in August 2024.