By Dennis Peprah, GNA
Sunyani, (Bono), Mar. 13 GNA – Nana Amoa Aturu Nkonkonkyia II, the Paramount Chief of the Mpuasu Japekrom Traditional Area the Bono Region, has described the withdrawal of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) funding support as a ‘significant blow’ to the nation’s health sector.
Checks revealed that countries around the world are already feeling the impact of the Donald Trump administration’s decision to eliminate more than 90 percent of foreign aid contracts.
Many of those programmes are in fragile countries, including Ghana, that are highly reliant on United States aid to support health systems and nutrition programmes.
“In Ghana, we are told that a yearly $150 million support, a major part of which goes into the healthcare financing is affected, and thereby putting almost half of the country’s population in a situation of immense concern”, Nana Nkonkonkyia II stated.
The Paramount Chief, also a health practitioner who had more than 20 years professional experience in Canada, was speaking at the opening session of the 2024 Annual Performance Review Meeting of the Bono Regional Directorate of Health in Sunyani.
Nana Nkonkonkyia II said, “The impact of the challenges, made worse by the withdrawal of the USAID’s significant funding support calls for an all-inclusive and all-hands on the deck approach towards health service delivery in Ghana”.
The two-day review meeting is on the theme “Expanding access to quality healthcare through collaboration: the impact of Network of Practice (NoP) on clinical and public health services”.
It is being attended by health workers, traditional authorities and other key stakeholders in the health sector.
Nana Nkonkonkyia II said the nation’s health sector ought to be innovative and creative to tackle deficits in the health service delivery, including limited resources, uneven distribution of practitioners and inadequate infrastructure.
He encouraged the Ghana Health Service to do more to also tackle the poor motivation of staff within the service delivery chain too.
Nana Nkonkonkyia II also called on the government to take stock of and complete all the uncompleted Agenda 111 District hospitals which were started by the previous administration to assist in the nation’s healthcare delivery.
Touching on the NoP introduced by the GHS, Dr Kofi Amo Kodieh, the Bono Regional Director of Health, said the region had launched 12 out of the 23 NOPs, assuring that all the NOPs would be launched by the end of 2025.
The NoP initiative reinforces the commitment of the GHS to identify innovative approaches to increase access to quality essential health care and population-based services for all and it is in line with the strategic focus to achieve Universal Health Coverage (UHC) by 2030.
Dr Kodieh said despite some success chalked, inadequate critical staff remained a huge challenge, confronting the NoP implementation in the region, calling for postings of more medical officers, Physician Assistants, Health Information Officers, as well as Dispensary and Laboratory Technicians and Pharmacists.
GNA
DEN/CA