Africa-Press – Ghana. The Government has allocated GH¢2.1 billion (US$200 million) to the Ghana Medical Trust Fund, known as MahamaCares, President John Dramani Mahama has announced.
The allocation, he explained, was necessitated by the growing burden of non-communicable diseases, which remain the nation’s major cause of morbidity.
“Non-communicable diseases account for more than 45 per cent of Ghana’s morbidity. Because of changing lifestyles, cancers, cardiac incidents, high blood pressure, diabetes, liver and kidney failures have become very common,” President Mahama said.
He made this known in his keynote address at the opening of the World Health Expo (WHX) Leaders Africa 2025 meeting in Accra, on the theme: “Catalyzing Africa’s Health Revolution through Investment, Innovation, Impact and Infrastructure.”
WHX Leaders is the premier gathering of Heads of State, Ministers, industry pioneers and global investors dedicated to transforming Africa’s healthcare landscape. This year’s summit seeks to unlock strategic investments, forge groundbreaking alliances and drive action to create resilient, world-class healthcare systems across the continent.
President Mahama said while funds under MahamaCares were available to start payment of claims and enroll people on the programme, the lack of diagnostic equipment in many public hospitals remained a major challenge.
“In most public hospitals, equipment such as Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and Computed Tomography (CT) scans are either broken down or unavailable. There’s limited cancer treatment outside Accra and Kumasi. So it’s not just about paying the high cost of treatment; even the equipment to diagnose and treat are in short supply,” he stated.
Recalling his tenure as Vice President under the late President Professor John Evans Atta Mills, he said government undertook a major retooling of hospitals, installing MRI machines, CT scans, X-ray machines and re-equipping laboratories at a cost of over US$250 million.
“We assumed we had brought healthcare back up to scratch. But today, I returned as President to find that in one hospital we built nine years ago, not a single piece of equipment is working. No CT scan, no MRI. Patients have to be transported to private facilities for these services,” he lamented.
President Mahama stressed that public-private partnerships (PPPs) were no longer optional but essential for sustainable healthcare delivery.
He noted that disparities in access to care were unacceptable, citing examples where patients in northern Ghana had to relocate to Accra or Kumasi for cancer treatment or dialysis.
“It behoves us as leaders to ensure that wherever you are geographically, you can access a certain standard of quality care. And we can only do that if we combine forces with the private sector,” he said.
The President assured that government would invest in diagnostics and treatment facilities, but only in partnership with the private sector to avoid repeating past mistakes.
“To the private sector, this is your opportunity to partner with government to achieve universal healthcare in Ghana,” he declared.
MahamaCares is a government initiative launched to provide financial support for Ghanaians with serious, costly chronic illnesses such as cancer, kidney failure and heart disease, which are not fully covered by the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS).
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