Ghana’s effort towards achieving universal health coverage (UHC) by 2030 has received a major boost with the launch of an eight-year financing strategy for the country’s health system.
Known as the Ghana Health Financing Strategy (2023-2030), the comprehensive plan seeks to address the persistent health financing challenges which affect health-related goals in the country.
The launch of the strategic document comes on the back of the development of a roadmap to guide the country's journey towards attainment of UHC. The strategic document, which focuses on efficiency and expenditure management while considering how to tackle critical revenue problems, was jointly launched by the Ministry of Health and the World Health Organisation (WHO) at the ministry’s headquarters in Accra last Friday.
Primary health care
In a speech read on his behalf by the Chief Director, Alhaji Hafiz Adam, the President’s representative at the ministry, Dr Okoe Boye, explained that the strategy sought to strengthen the purchasing of primary healthcare services at the lower levels, enhance provider autonomy, management and accountability to receive and use funds.
He said the strategy was not only in line with the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) but also the Principles of the African Union Agenda 2063, Global Action Plan for Healthy Lives and Well-being, Declaration on Primary Health Care in Astana (2018), UHC 2030 Compact, the Initiative of UHC 2030 and the Political Declaration of UHC adopted at the UN High-Level Meeting in September 2019.
“The strategy responds to international standards which require that the financing system should be specifically designed to provide all people with access to the needed health, including prevention, promotion, treatment and rehabilitation of sufficient quality, and ensure that users are not exposed to financial hardship,” he said.
He added that the ministry had already begun the implementation of the strategy and disclosed that currently, the ministry had reviewed the essential health services package to include more preventive and other non-communicable diseases in the benefit package for implementation.
Additionally, he said, the National Health Insurance Scheme tariff review was also underway and the implementation of the Network of Practice (NoP) which was aimed at reorganising service delivery at the lower level to provide quality of care was also ongoing.
Timely
For his part, the Officer in charge of the WHO Country Office, Dr Frank John Lule, described the launch as timely since it came at the time the country was rolling out key strategies towards achieving UHC.
“As development partners, we are happy to note that the revised health financing strategy seeks to provide practical guidance and solutions to financing primary health care in Ghana.
He stressed that development partners would remain committed to assisting the government to build a resilient health system that placed sustainable financing at the centre of health delivery.
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