Abstract
Over 600 million people living in sub-Saharan Africa do not have access to electricity. Modern healthcare services, including vaccine refrigeration, which require electricity are therefore lacking in such energy-deprived communities. In this work, analysis has been conducted on how electricity access can help improve healthcare service delivery and rural development, with a case study on 3 different off-grid solar photovoltaic (PV) systems in community-based health planning and services (CHPS) in Ghana. Analysis from this study showed that for the 3.0 kWp solar PV systems installed at the various sites, the in-house electricity consumptions are between 4.30 and 7.58 kWh per day. It was found out that excess electricity generation of 148–304 kWh per month is available and can be used to provide other economic services including phone charging, torchlight battery charging, and small-sized cold storage services to generate income for the maintenance of the systems, which is critical for sustainability of solar PV installations in rural poor communities. The study results also showed that electrified health facilities which are able to provide basic healthcare services have potential impact on community health outcomes and rural development. Assessment conducted at the CHPS compounds revealed that, generally, there is improvement in healthcare service delivery resulting in time savings of 15-43 hours per month for the inhabitants which can potentially be used for productive work. The time savings were more significant in females and children than in males. In many rural agro-based communities in developing countries, female and children are usually the workforce engaged in various farming activities. This paper concludes that access to electricity in CHPS compounds helps to improve community health outcomes and increases time availability for women to engage in productive work that can potentially result in significant socioeconomic activities and rural development.
Highlights
It is estimated that, worldwide, over 1 billion people do not have access to electricity [1]
The daily in-house (CHPS compounds) solar PV electricity consumption data were obtained from the SD card data loggers installed in the inverters from the different sites
Analysis has been conducted on how access to electricity can potentially improve community health and development in rural energy-deprived communities in developing countries, with a case study in Ghana
Summary
Worldwide, over 1 billion people do not have access to electricity [1]. A huge leap-frog and an integrated bottom-up approach with private sector financing [3] is needed in such communities if universal access to modern energy services by 2030 is to be realized [4]. Access to modern energy services has strong link with socioeconomic development of communities [5,6,7,8,9] and more importantly when the energy is put into productive use [10]. In areas where the national electricity grid is not available (off-grid areas), renewable energy solutions [11] including. Health centres in management sub-district sub-district teams (SDHMT)
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