NDC delivered in health sector, we’ll do more if voted for – Omane Boamah

The National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) alone is insufficient in ensuring that all Ghanaians have access to quality health treatment in spite of their financial status, Dr Edward Omane Boamah, a former Minister of Communications, has said.

To that end, he said, if the National Democratic Congress (NDC) wins this year’s elections to form the next government, it will introduce a policy dubbed the ‘Free Primary HealthCare Plan’ to assist Ghanaians access primary healthcare without cost.

Dr Omane Boamah explained on The Key Points on TV3 Saturday, October 10 that the NDC has the track record of delivering good programmes for the health sector as well as infrastructural development.

He told show host Abena Tabi that the previous Mahama administration built several hospitals and started new ones which were not completed before the party lost power.

The current administration, he noted, has abandoned those uncompleted projects.

In the Eastern Region, for instance, he said, “when you go to Abetifi they have not continued with it” in a manner they would have delivered health for the people.

He added: “You take the records of health infrastructure and you say yes, the NDC delivered massively.

“We expanded the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) to admit many but I will be the first to admit that the NHIS is insufficient to deliver a health for all that we are all seeking to achieve nine years from now.”

Speaking also on the same programme, Deputy Minister of Health Dr Bernard Okoe Boye said the NDC administration had a poor show in the health sector when they were in office.

He noted that due to bad economic management of the Mahama administration, nurses, doctors and other trained health workers stayed home for years without being employed.

When the Akufo-Addo administration took over, he said, about 93,000 nurses and health workers have been given clearance for employment into the public sector.

“We have talked about the ratio of health worker to patient improving.

“We are going to do that by giving employment to our trained nurses, doctors, laboratories scientists.

“We had nurses who sat home for average four years, those who trained from 2012, most of them were at home because government then as a result of the poor economic management could not sustain their employment in the public sector.

“We have given clearance to over 93,000 health workers. As we speak every nurse who has finished quotation is either absorbed into government sector or is in the heal Ghana Module of the Nation’s Builders Corp.”