C2.2 Trillion support for health sector

DEVELOPMENT partners have pledged ?2.2 trillion to support the health sector in its five-year programme of work.

The Minister of Health, Dr Kwaku Afriyie, who disclosed this at the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the ministry and the partners, said the ministry is expecting ?3.12 trillion from its partners to enable it to meet the targets it has set for the five-year programme of work — ie from 2002 to 2006. The pledges were made at the end of a three-day Annual Health Partners Summit held in Accra to provide a platform for the Ministry of Health and its partners to evaluate the progress and the challenges of the health sector over the last five years.

Dr Afriyie said pledges received so far were from DFID, DANIDA, WHO, The Netherlands, UNICEF, GAVI and Global Alliance for HIV/AIDS. The World Bank promised to donate $75 million while the World Health Organisation will release $15 million and DANIDA said it will make available $38 million. UNICEF pledged $20 million, GAVI, in-charge of an international expanded project for immunisation, $16.3 million, Department for International Development $71.5 million, the Royal Netherlands Embassy, 75 million Euros and Global Alliance for AIDS, $15 million.

Dr Afriyie said even though development partners such as the EU, USAID, JICA and UNFPA are yet to make their intentions known, he was optimistic that the ministry’s target will be met after these pledges.

He said over the past five years, the Ministry of Health has registered considerable reduction in vaccine preventable diseases which are responsible for high mortality rate among children under five years.

He attributed the achievement to the implementation of sustained vaccination programmes and surveillance mechanisms undertaken to monitor and forestall any outbreak of the diseases.

Dr Afriyie said in line with the ministry’s target of controlling malaria, taxes on insecticide treated mosquito bednets have been waived to make it affordable to the to public and expressed regret that only four per cent of the people in the country sleep in bednets.

On the set target of the ministry for the next five years the minister said, a comprehensive programme to curb the incidence of HIV/AIDS among people between the ages of 15 to 24 by 25 per cent, will be initiated.

He said the ministry in collaboration with its partners will plan interventions to reduce mortality due to malaria and tuberculosis by half.

Dr Afriyie said in line with the Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy (GPRS), “the ministry’s programmes will be geared towards promoting equity in access to quality health, nutrition services and sustainable financing arrangement that specifically protect the poor and enhance efficiency in health delivery”.

He said the ministry will address the acute inequality in the distribution of the limited health personnel who are concentrated in the Greater Accra and the Ashanti regions by redistributing personnel.

Dr Afriyie explained that this will be achieved through a deliberate shift of developing health infrastructure to remote areas and institution of various incentive schemes to attract health workers to those areas.

“Human resource for the sector is no doubt one of the most difficult areas we will need to tackle in the next five years”, he said, adding that “current statistics show that over the last five years, some regions have lost as much as 57 per cent of their nurses and the overall staffing position in the health sector keeps deteriorating”.

The chairman of EU, Mr Ole Blicher-Olsen, who was one of the signatories, on behalf of the development partners, expressed satisfaction with the progress made in the health sector during the last five years.

He, however, urged the ministry to strengthen its efforts in the monitoring and evaluation of programmes to ensure sustainability.