In 2000, all 192 United Nations member states and at least 23 international organizations agreed to work together to achieve eight international development goals by 2015. One of these jointly-developed Millennium Development Goals (MDG), Goal 4, is focused on reducing infant and child mortality.

Project Five Alive! unleashes the innovative potential of frontline health workers to develop, test, and implement strategies to overcome systems failures that lead to preventable deaths in children less five years of age (Under-5) in Ghana.  In so doing, we aim to accelerate  the achievement of the Fourth Millennium Development Goal in Ghana (i.e. reduction in Under-5 mortality rate by 66% from 110 per 1,000 live births in 1990 to less than 40 per 1,000 live births by 2015) through the application of quality improvement (QI) methods. 

The current mortality rate is estimated at 80 per 1,000 live births.  Of these deaths,  forty percent occur in the first month of life. About half of those deaths occur on the first day of life, while an additional 25 percent occur by the end of the first week. For this reason, Project Fives Alive! focuses on helping health workers to improve the processes of care during pregnancy through the most vulnerable period of labor, delivery, and postnatal care, and finally, care of the older infant and child up to the age of five.

The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) and the National Catholic Health Service (NCHS) are collaborating with the Ghana Health Service (GHS) to spread the implementation of successful strategies across the country for maximal impact.  The project is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Project Fives Alive! 5-Year Implementation Plan

National in scope, the program is being implemented in four successive waves over five years, starting on a small scale in the North of Ghana and eventually spreading to all health facilities across the country – to cover an estimated 3.3 million children under the age of five.