For and by Communities: An Assessment of Feasibility for a Novel International Healthcare Program in Rural Ghana and Nigeria

Residues of Global Health’s origins in tropical and colonial medicine remain central in the framework of international medical outreach—trips in which students and practitioners arrive in other countries to impose health aid. In hopes to redirect such aid in a manner that also builds community autonomy, twenty-six partnering communities across rural Ghana and Nigeria developed a novel healthcare system proposal that impresses community voice as imperative while collaboratively working with international volunteers. This thesis seeks to exemplify this framework of community-driven efforts by working at the request of these communities to investigate the legal frameworks and technological precedents salient to the implementation of their program proposal. A grey literature review of legal documents from Ghana, Nigeria, and the United States, as well as a review international codes and technologies, finds that the proposed program is both feasible and supported by the current infrastructures related to all healthcare governances. While further steps are required to initiate the proposed program, the example it leaves is one towards a community-driven framework