Nii Martey M. Botchway
Accra, May 3, GNA – The Minister of Health, Mr Kweku Agyemang Manu says leveraging scientific and academic research is key to achieving Universal Health Coverage (UHC) in Ghana.
Speaking at a research symposium organised by PharmAccess Foundation, the Minister said, there was the need to build sustainable partnerships between government, private sector, academia, non-state actors and development partners to upscale service delivery and secure predictable health financing for long-term results on health outcomes.
Speaking on the topic, “Leveraging partnerships and innovations to drive research for policy towards UHC.” Mr Agyemang Manu said.
Ghana will require leveraging the expertise of scientific researchers and academia working with national and global data platforms for the measurement, data collection and analysis of evidence for tracking UHC indicators and targets.
He said the evidence gathered from these researches could provide insights to design innovative strategies and revise existing initiatives to fully unlock Ghana’s potential to achieve UHC.
He noted that in collaboration with strategic partners, the ministry could disaggregate the UHC indicators to account for their equity efficiency ratios by geographical areas, income groups, educational levels, age, gender and vulnerability analysis.
“We look forward to strategic partnerships with academic partners and researchers that will enable the Ministry of Health to measure and track progress in the implementation of the UHC strategies,” the minister noted.
Mr Agyemang Manu who commended PharmAccess Foundation for their contribution to health and national development, said their strategic partnership was a guiding principle that was key to Ghana achieving UHC.
Dr Gifty Sunkwa-Mills, Operations Manager at PharmAccess Foundation, said the objective of
the symposium was to address the role of research in enhancing implementation and policy making for
innovations in the financing and delivery of health care in Ghana.
She explained that participants would be exposed to Continuing professional development (CPD) points for their training requirement with a special emphasis on examples of digital health system interventions in Ghana, which was being implemented with various key stakeholders such as the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) and Christian Health Association of Ghana (CHAG).
She also indicated that the symposium would offer case studies presentation and panel discussions that would ensure exchanges on lessons learnt and best practices, bridging the gaps between research,
operations and policy making.
The Research Symposium is organized by PharmAccess and key stakeholders of Ghana’s health sector.
They incude the Ministry of Health, Ghana Health Service, NHIA, CHAG and Health Facilities Regulatory Authority (HeFRA), as well as research and academic institutions such as Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research, University of Ghana Department of Economics, Ghana Business School,
and School of Public Health.
GNA