By Samira Larbie
Accra, Sept 08, GNA – Mr Kwaku Agyeman-Manu, Minister of Health, has launched the 2022-2026 National Health Promotion Strategy to help monitor integrated health services in the country.
The five-year strategy contains the opportunities and strategies to further improve Health Promotion in Ghana, through an all-inclusive approach that leverages efforts and resources to sustain impact.
It also seeks to improve the quality of health promotion services at all levels, improve the health of communities in Ghana and increase collaboration and partnerships for health service provision.
The Minister launched the National Health Promotion Strategy at the second Ghana Health Service (GHS), Senior Managers’ Meeting, on Wednesday in Accra.
He said this was a major step towards ensuring that Ghana had a roadmap to realise the integration of demand generation, behavior change and health service delivery.
“The ability and leadership of the Ghana Health Service to coordinate the development of this meeting and the launch of the National Health Promotion Strategy is a major step towards ensuring we have a roadmap to realise the integration of demand generation, behavior change and health service delivery,” he stated.
Mr Agyeman-Manu said these essential elements, when effectively planned and implemented, would see measurable improvements in key health indicators and a healthier society.
The second Senior Managers Meeting was on the theme, “Promoting Healthcare Planning for Healthy Lives: Where Healthcare Systems Meet Healthy Behaviours.”
The objective of the meeting was to take a renewed look at how the GHS together with its managers could match their performance thus far with proactive health planning to address the health care needs of Ghanaians.
It will also synergise and enhance health seeking behaviours and protect the health of families and communities.
The Minister commended the regional directors for their contributions in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic and reminded management of the Ghana Health Service would always ensure that “the lives and health of our fellow citizens are in safe hands.”
He, however, stated that COVID-19 was still in the country and that vaccination exercises needed to be accelerated to protect the lives of Ghanaians.
Recommit yourselves to our commitment as health directors to enhance health care delivery in the country, Minister urged the senior managers.
Dr Aboagye Dacosta, the Director of Health Promotion Division, in a speech read on his behalf by the Deputy Director of Health Promotion Division, explained that the Strategy was in five chapters.
“The strategy seeks to build healthy public policy, create supportive environments, strengthen community action, develop personal skills and reorient health services,” he stated.
The first chapter gives an overview of the strategy, chapter two talks about current health promotion situation, chapter three gives details on the proposed National Health Promotion Strategies and Action Plan, chapter four is on key activities and chapter five talks about monitoring, evaluation and learning framework, he further explained.
Dr Dacosta said the strategy had become necessary as it would help inform Ghanaians on how to stay healthy and to support the initiatives in the community that influenced health and wellbeing.
This would increase the ability of Ghanaians to increase control over and improve their health, involve the population in the context of their everyday lives and drive activities that were geared toward promoting health and preventing ill-health rather than focusing on people at risk for specific diseases, he said.
GNA