Government has no plans to upgrade of Community Health Improvement Services or CHIPS compounds to health centre status.

That is according to Director- General of Ghana Health Service, Dr. Anthony Nsiah-Asare.

He, however, says the facilities across the country will be resourced to enable them to execute their core mandate of promoting health education and prevention.

There have been calls for the conversion of CHIPS compounds into health centres to meet the health needs of the people.

But  Dr. Nsiah-Asare, however, says CHIPS compounds will continue to play their roles in healthcare delivery as the lowest level of healthcare administration.

"The position of the Ghana Health Service is that, CHIPS  is the lowest level of our healthcare. The health centre is the next level, district hospital is the next level and the teaching hospitals and then the specialist hospitals. We should let it be like that and then do what we called referral system," he said.

There are over 1,400 functional CHIPS compounds with 3,175 CHIPS zones nationwide but many are said to lack basic equipment to work at full capacity.

According to Dr. Nsiah-Asare, an evaluation exercise will begin next month in a bid to equip them.

It forms part of the Universal Health Coverage under the Millennium  Development Goal 4.

"We are going to give the necessary equipment for the CHIPS centre to be a CHIP centre because they will need the BP machine; they will need a weighing machine. They will need a tray for injection. That's why we as Ghana Health Service, we have an equipment package that we will make sure that we will try and equip every CHIPS compound with basic equipment."

Supporting development partners include United States Agency for International Development, Korea Foundation for International Healthcare and Japan International Cooperation Agency.

According to him, government through the Ministry of Health, Ghana Health Services and other state agencies will consider proposals and recommendations  to build new health centers and district hospitals in areas earmarked for such projects in consultation with all stakeholders.