The Minister of Health, Mr Kwaku Agyemang-Manu has underscored the need for all hospitals to have an emergency department in order to provide the needed health care for patients at all times.
He was of the belief that if all the hospitals had emergency units, people would not have to rush to the major hospitals all the time, or even die on their way while they are turned away by the hospitals that do not have emergency units.
Speaking at the opening ceremony of the 2019 Health Summit, which was held in Accra on Monday, Mr Agyemang-Manu identified that, “Our emergency services in health facilities were constrained in a number of cases. It is not a good indication of our level of development when emergency cases turned away from our facilities eventually die because we are unable to provide the needed care.”
“We will need to improve our emergency care service drastically if we are to remain relevant in the eyes of the public. It is in this light that we have directed all hospitals to have functional emergency departments in the short to medium term to provide such emergency services to all in need,” he said.
Summit
The summit which was to review the performance of the health sector in the implementation of the 2018 Programme of Work, was on the theme, “Ghana’s Movement Towards Universal Health Coverage”.
Key stakeholders from the health sector, and other important sectors, including the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, converged at the Labadi Beach Hotel to deliberate on how to improve the health sector of Ghana.
Based on the theme of the summit, Mr Agyemang-Manu noted that the World Health Organisation (WHO) identified Primary Health Care as the vehicle for delivering Universal Health Coverage.
However, he identified that Ghana’s Primary Health Care (PHC) structures had become weak over the years, adding that the primary level which was the key level where most government policies are implemented were not well resourced.
“We all know that a health system with a strong PHC as its main strategy delivers better health outcomes, efficiency and improved quality of care compared to other models. There is the need to reinvigorate PHC through empowering people and communities to undertake basic health promotive initiatives to enhance their health;” he said.
“Also, strengthening health service integration with essential public health functions as its core and strengthening governance at the District and sub-district levels by enhancing multi sectoral policy and action to ensure relevant determinants of health are appropriately tackled taking into consideration the local context,” Mr Agyemang-Manu said.
Meanwhile, he said the implementation of the sector’s flagship Community-based Health Planning and Services (CHPS) was going according to expectation.
According to him, he was reliably informed that the CHPS Verification exercise that was undertaken last year showed that only 13% of CHPS zones satisfied requirements for functionality.
“I will be having dialogue with key implementers of CHPS and other stakeholders to dialogue how to put CHPS on a better pedestal. I am of the firm belief that CHPS is a community-based initiative and therefore personnel recruited for the purpose should be prepared to stay and work in the communities. This should be a prerequisite,” he said.
On the other hand, the Minister of Food and Agriculture, Mr Owusu Afriyie Akoto pledged the ministry’s support to the Ministry of health, in its quest to achieve a universal health coverage.
“I am informed that you are working on developing a Universal Health Coverage Roadmap and one of your key actions is to strengthen the capacity to deal with disease outbreak and also scale up efforts in nutrition. I consider this Universal Health Coverage Roadmap as an important activity so as to chart the path and create a compass for how to achieve Universal Health Coverage,” he said.
“Also for this reason, my Ministry would like to be fully involved in this plan which the Ministry of Health is developing particularly, for the operational level towards the realization of Universal Health Coverage,” Mr Afriyie Akoto.
He however, proposed regular meetings with the Ministry of Health at the policy level to explore the multi-sectoral action that was yearned for at the operational level to be realised.
“I am happy to note that your yet to be launched National Health Policy recognises multi sectoral action as a major policy thrust. I promise the full participation of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture in implementing the National Health Policy. This is to ensure that cross-sectoral issues that affect both ministries are brought to the fore for discussion and appropriate solutions found,” he added.
Ghana|Atinkaonline.com |Porcia Oforiwaa Ofori
