NDC's Response To Akufo Addo's False Claims On Healthcare Delivery
Good morning Ladies and Gentlemen of the media.
We have invited you here this morning, to dilate on a matter of national importance concerning this year's elections.
As the various political parties go about their campaigns, various issues critical to the well being of our people, are being articulated. It is our view however that unless all stakeholders, especially the media, make an effort to hold them to a strict standard of veracity and candour, the tendency will be for some to freely resort to making all kinds of false promises and lying to the people in a desperate bid to win power.
We will, in the days ahead, be regularly addressing a number of pertinent issues with a view to setting the records straight, in order to enable the electorate make informed choices based on Truth.
NPP's False Claims About Free Healthcare
Today, we want to set the records straight on the claims being made all over the place by NPP's Presidential Candidate and his party, about the spectacular achievements of the NPP as far as providing FREE HEALTH CARE is concerned.
Ladies and gentlemen, how truly free, is the free healthcare the ruling NPP is boasting about?
The truth is that healthcare in Ghana is not free.
The ruling NPP continues to trumpet that it has succeeded in providing Ghanaians with free healthcare whereas a close examination of the scheme exposes this claim as false.
The reality is that Ghanaians are directly financing the healthcare through the compulsory payment of premium which has astronomically increased from 75,000 old cedis to nearly 300,000 old cedis today.
It is also a fact that all Ghanaians are making regular contributions to the NHIS anytime they patronize goods and services that are levied with the 2.5 percent National Health Insurance Levy.
It is also true that workers of Ghana make additional contribution to the funding of the scheme by virtue of the monthly deduction of 2.5% of their SSNIT contributions.
It is an undeniable fact also that under the previous ‘cash and carry’ system, there were comprehensive exemptions that applied to infants under five years, lactating mothers, pregnant women, the elderly and the indigents, that is destitute people.
Under the current so called Free healthcare of the NPP government, anyone falling in these categories, who is not registered with the NHIS scheme, has no help and is condemned to his or her fate.
The seriousness of this problem becomes even more noticeable, when we remember that while 9 million of the 22 million Ghanaians are said to have registered with the scheme, UNDP Ghana Human Development Report 2007, emphatically states that only 6.8 percent of the total population of Ghana, that is less than 1.5 million Ghanaians had the National Health Insurance ID cards. This clearly shows that the overwhelming majority of our people are not accessing the national health facility contrary to the loud proclamations of Nana Akufo Addo and the NPP.
In the wisdom of the NPP therefore, the destitute, infants, the elderly, pregnant and lactating mothers who have no means of paying the health insurance premium of 300,000 old cedis should not be given health care.
In the meantime, these people like virtually all Ghanaians are making regular contributions to the NHIS anytime they patronize goods and services that are levied with the 2.5 percent National Health Insurance Levy.
Even though the NPP candidate and his cronies in government told the people of Ghana that the 2.5% NHIL was to be levied for only six months, they have disingenuously maintained the levy from 2003 to date. Ghanaians have continued to contribute to the scheme, even though the destitute and other vulnerable groups are denied access to free treatment unless they pay the premium.
In the midst of all this blatant insensitivity, the NPP and its Presidential Candidate continue deceiving the Ghanaian people that the NPP has made healthcare Free in the country. How free is this Free?
Ladies and gentlemen of the media, the NPP and its candidate have deliberately hidden from the people of Ghana a number of very serious problems that have continued to bedevil the scheme since its inception- problems which would not have been encountered if they had listened to the caution of the NDC not to rush the bill through parliament in the manner they did.
Recently, while on a visit to the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, the NPP Presidential Candidate, Nana Akufo-Addo was informed that as at July this year, National Health Insurance claims owed to the hospital from 2007 had accrued to 14 billion cedis. Similar huge amounts are owed many health institutions all over the country, both public and private- a situation which has seriously compromised their ability to procure vital drugs and other essentials and thus brought about a marked reduction in the quality of healthcare delivery all over the country.
OPD numbers in our health institutions have gone up significantly and in certain instances reached as high as 150 percent, sometimes due to the false belief that healthcare would be free. This situation has resulted in waiting time in our hospitals going up, with some patients, including people scheduled for urgent surgeries, having to wait for many hours, sometimes days before seeing a doctor.
It does not therefore come as a surprise that UNDP Ghana Human Development Report 2007 shows that infant mortality which in 1999 was 57 deaths per 1000 live births had gone up to about 70 deaths per 1000 live births.
Health Infrastructure
In the NPP's rush to play to the gallery and create the false impression that they have delivered absolutely free healthcare to Ghanaians, they have completely forgotten that without the availability of adequate healthcare infrastructure all over the nation, the whole quality healthcare talk can only remain a mirage. Ghanaians wish to enquire from the NPP presidential candidate, Nana Akufo Addo and his NPP, how many regional hospitals they have been able to construct over the last eight years. They should just name one regional hospital they have added to the stock the visionary NDC government bequeathed to them.
The NDC had a programme of building modern, well equipped state of the art regional hospitals in every region of Ghana and similar district hospitals in all districts as the basis for the take off of a national health insurance scheme. In that regard, new regional hospitals were built in the Central Region, the Brong Ahafo Region, the Volta Region; the Effia Nkwanta hospital in Sekondi, in the Western Region was refurbished and elevated into a regional hospital, while the Korle-Bu, 37 Military, and Okomfo Anokye Teaching hospitals were comprehensively rehabilitated to better serve as national referral hospitals.
The Tamale hospital was on course to be rehabilitated into a Regional and Teaching hospital when the NDC left office in the year 2000. Eight years down the road, the Tamale Hospital has been left to deteriorate.
We can also give examples of new modern district hospitals built or planned for construction all over the country when the NDC left office.
We ask again- how many district hospitals have Nana Akufo Addo and his NPP added to the large stock left by the NDC?
Human Resource Development & Service Conditions
While boasting about the free heath care they claim is being provided under their tenure, the important issues of human resource requirements and working conditions of health workers continue to be relegated to the background.
It is a fact that over the last eight years, there has been no radical improvement in numbers of doctors and other health professionals contrary to Nana Akufo- Addo's claims at the I.E.A presidential encounter recently. The number of nurses being produced annually, is about 2000 and nowhere near the 7000 Nana Akufo-Addo mentioned. Indeed, the total workforce including doctors, nurses, health aides, laboratory staff etc in our health services amount to a total of 7648.
So it is plain that in addition to creating a patently false impression that the overwhelming majority of our people are enjoying free health care, the candidate of the NPP, Nana Akufo-Addo has also been deliberately misleading the nation about the numbers of health professionals in the country.
Our doctors, nurses and other health professionals continue to experience serious hardships brought about by escalating cost of living in the face of less than commensurate remuneration. We continue hearing about Housemen and nurses out of training working for months without pay. Yet against this background of agony facing personnel within the health sector, Nana Akufo-Addo and his party are going about singing songs of Free and wonderful healthcare to our people.
Time will not permit us to go into the full details of the massive corruption that has engulfed the NHIS just as it has engulfed virtually every facet of national life under Nana Akufo-Addo’s ruling NPP.
In sum, we are calling on Ghanaians to open their eyes and see through the free healthcare gimmick and falsehood being sold to them by a desperate ruling party and its Presidential Candidate determined to use every false means to deceive the people and win back their mandate.
In the meantime, whilst reiterating the need for the issues based campaign to be anchored on Truth, we wish to assure the nation that the leader of the NDC, Prof J.E.A Mills will shortly be out-dooring the party’s Manifesto which will outline our detailed policies and programmes on healthcare and all other segments of our national life.
Thank you very much and God bless you all.
