Africa-Press – Ghana. Professor Reinhard Busse, a head of department at the Berlin University of Technology (TUB), has said the nation’s health systems must provide for the non-medical needs of the citizenry.
He said in addition to public health needs, inter-sectorial policies on such as road safety should be considered in designing a wholistic health system that would enhance the attainment of Universal Health Coverage (UHC).
Prof Busse was addressing the opening of the 5th Annual Ghana Health Policy Dialogue in Ho.
He said policies to enhance financial protection should also be “at the heart of health coverage”, adding that “It will help improve the system.
“We need to design the health system performance assessment in a way to serve the needs of the people,” Prof. Busse said.
He said the remarkable performance of the nation was based on the heath assessment.
“Ghana is doing well. But there is a big gap in terms of poverty, and universal health coverage.
“20 years after the implementation of the National Health Insurance Scheme, coverage is below 40 per cent. I will advise decision makers to think of ways to make it easier for people to subscribe and resubscribe.
“The benefit package must be reevaluated. People should see the value. Important diseases should be covered,” Prof. Busse said, adding that, efforts to make it more accessible, “should be high on the political agenda”.
This year’s policy dialogue is on the theme “Health System Performance Assessment for UHC in Ghana: A Whole-Of-Sector Approach?”.
Mr Mahama Asei Seini, MP for Daboya Makunguri in the Savanna Region, opened the dialogue on the behalf of the health minister, and said Ghana remained commitment to the attainment of the UHC, and had renewed the commitment most recently with the Revised National Health Policy 2020, and in the Universal Health Coverage Roadmap for Ghana (2020-2030).
He said the health service remained “crucial” to the attainment of the UHC, and thus considered sector assessment of equal essence.
“We therefore must assure ourselves that our health system is performing optimally and can be used as the right vehicle to achieve our UHC aspirations. And one of the ways is to access the performance of our health system.
“Measuring the performance of a health system is an essential requirement in creating systems that generate efficient, equitable, patient focused, assessable, and sustainable results,” the health minister said.
He said the Ministry had maintained a commendable monitoring and assessment regime, with a myriad of tools and sources, with the most comprehensive till date being the Holistic Assessment Tool adopted in 2008.
The Minister said also that a soon to be launched Health Information Systems Strategy Plan (2022-2025) was a recent milestone of the ministry and said it “provided a good starting point to begin this important dialogue on health system performance assessment as the availability of a comprehensive and robust health data/information system is pivotal to assessing any health system”.
The health policy dialogue was instituted in 2017 as a collaborative platform to explore and respond to the needs of the heath sector in attaining UHC.
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