Ministry of Health to review its performance

Accra, April 20, GNA - Dr George Sipa Yankey, Minister of Health, on Monday called for a focused approach towards the implementation of the policies and programmes of the Ministry of Health (MOH).

He said Ghana was still lacking behind in its effort to attain the objectives of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), saying currently the level of poverty and disease burden among a larger proportion of the population was still high and called for a propelling effort to speed up health interventions for better outcomes. Dr Yankey was opening a five-day Health summit organised by the MOH to review the performance and progress of the Health sector in the year 2008 and the way forward to meet its challenges in the coming years. He called for the need to reposition and re-strategise and ensure that proper mechanisms for policy and programme implementation became the core of the sector, while ensuring that emphasis was placed on productivity of all health workers to ensure quality service delivery.

Dr Yankey said government was poised to provide a strong leadership for a new universal and integrated health service, saying the trend was to ensure the enforcement of collective responsibility on the heads of agencies in the sector.

"I will personally supervise the cleaning of the Ministry's payroll and ensure that ghost names that are detected do not find their way back," he said. The summit, which was on the theme: "Change for better results," brought together all development partners working with and under the Ministry including UNICEF, WHO, United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

Dr Yankey said though the MOH recorded remarkable progress and success in various areas of disease interventions during the year 2008, other crucial areas such as the rate of malnutrition, anaemia and high malaria reports among children were unacceptable.

He said it was reported that 28 percent of Ghanaian children were malnourished while 78 percent battled with anaemia adding that "malaria also causes the country about 7,300 Ghana cedis each year".

The Minister called for a scaled up of interventions to ensure that malaria which had been identified as a major killer of both pregnant women and children under five, was controlled to the barest minimum among the Ghanaian society.

He said to tackle the challenge it required commitment on the part of all stakeholders, devotion of large resources as well as finance and said it was important for all to realise that the gains far outweighed the cost incurred.

Dr Yankey also mentioned that there were also the problems of inequalities in the health sector, citing the rural-urban divide, which he said hindered quality health care delivery in the country. He called for collaborative efforts to move resources from already choked areas and measures to be put in place to ensure the enhancement of the state of facilities in the various health institutions to attract health workers to accept postings to all facilities, no matter where they were.

The Minister further said the MOH had designed a gender policy which would enable it to mainstream gender into all its policies and programmes to address the numerous challenges that confronted the health sector.

This, he said, would bring out potentials from divers areas to ensure the smooth running, implementation and monitoring of its policies and programmes at the lowest level.

Mr Donald Teitelbaum, US Ambassador in Ghana commended the donor partners for their respective roles in the provision of quality health care for Ghanaians.

He however stated that as donor assistance to support Ghana's health care continued to dwindle due to various reasons such as the harsh global economic crises, it was important that Ghana found alternative sources of funding, citing local economic financing of health projects and programmes to ensure sustainability. He called for continued collaboration and partnership with the MOH to ensure that quality healthcare was provided for all. Participants at the end of the summit are expected to draft an Aide Memoir that contained a review of policies and programmes of the ministry and a way forward to achieve quality health care for Ghanaians. 20 April 09