Ghana Marks World Health Day 2018

Government, with support from the World Bank, will assist the entire Community Health-based Planning Service (CHPS) compound system for everyone everywhere to be able to access the facilities for basic healthcare.

The initiative is expected to help reduce the burden of disease on the country and strengthen the labour force, thereby increasing productivity.

The Minister for Health, Mr Kwaku Agyeman-Manu, made this known at the commemoration of the 2018 World Health Day in Accra, yesterday.

Speaking on the theme: Universal Health Coverage: Everyone, Everywhere, Mr Agyeman-Manu explained that universal health care was a strategy to ensure that all essential health services such as HIV, tuberculosis, malaria, non-communicable diseases and mental health, sexual, reproductive and new born and child health were available, accessible and affordable to all who required them.

He said one of the aims of universal healthcare was to create asystem of protection which provided equality of opportunity for people to enjoy an attainable level of health care while ensuring that people had access to the health care they needed without suffering financial hardship.

For Ghana to move towards universal health coverage, the Minister said, the country needed to find more money to invest into the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), adding that in the near future, when funds had been secured, government would extend the coverage of the scheme to ensure universal health care.

He, however, called on all stakeholders in the sector to play their roles to ensure the objective was achieved and urged all citizens to observe the rules of hygiene--stop littering the environment and desist from open defecating anywhere while ensuring to keep a clean environment and washing their hands well with soap and water.

In his remarks, Dr Owen Kaluwa, Country Director, World Health Organization (WHO),explained that universal health care did not mean health care would be totally free for all, as such a system would place more financial burden on the economy of developing countries.

Dr Kaluwa appealed to government to live up to the Sustainable Development Goal pledges made in 2015 and commit them to concrete action.

He pledged the commitment of WHO to continuing to support the country to build stronger, more resilient and responsive health system through universal health care to advance health for all.

Source: ISD (Doris Sodjah & Chantal Aidoo)

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