NPP Determined to Abolish Cash And Carry - Minister

The Hon. Minister for Health, Dr. Richard Anane, has reassured Ghanaians that the New Patriotic Party (NPP) Government is committed to abolishing the cash and carry system, which was introduced in the country by the previous government.

Dr. Anane said government would leave no stone unturned this year to ensure that it has in place a variety of insurance schemes to protect all Ghanaians against unexpected health care expenditures that the current cash and carry system represents.

He emphasized that under this NPP government nobody in Ghana would be denied medical attention because of his or her inability to pay cash.

According to him, government is putting in place structures that will enable emergency cases to be treated promptly in all public hospitals in the country. Dr. Anane gave this assurance last Friday in Accra, at a national workshop for the dissemination of Partnership Health Reform (PHR) Products for Mutual Health Organizations in Ghana.

The objective of the workshop is to disseminate products and tools arising from PHR's work in Ghana over the last three years, with funding from USAID. The products and tools are meant to assist groups and individuals who are either looking for ways to resolve pressing health care financing problems through collective solidarity mechanisms, or who have started such schemes and need further guidance and technical help to better manage their organizations.

However, the minister articulated that government is aware that the challenges of health financing go beyond the simple cases of the average Ghanaian inability to pay. He said, "Although poverty remains a central issue, the demand for the search for alternatives is being driven by several other factors".

Among those factors, he pointed out, is the changing demographic profile of developing countries including Ghana, which means that in the near future the nation would have an ageing population with its attendant increases in more chronic non- communicable diseases. Adding, this coupled with an increasing dependency will lead to an overall reduction in personal income generation.

Thus making the ability to pay for basic care becoming a more prominent issue, which will require an increasing third party involvement. Dr. Anane added that if Ghana is to realise its goal for increasing the total number of healthy Ghanaian lives regardless of their socio-economic standing, and to achieve universal access to promotive, preventive, and basic curative services, it needs first of all to reduce the discrepancy in health status among the rich and the poor and among the non-urban and urban communities.

"A country can not hope to improve the standards of living for its people and reap the benefits of economic growth without accessible, affordable and quality health care for its people", added Dr. Frank Young, Director for USAID Mission in Ghana.

He disclosed that the assistance for the development of the products falls broadly within the USAID's support for the Government of Ghana's programme to improve the health of Ghanaians families by increasing the use of maternal and child health services.