By Francis Ntow, GNA
Accra, May 4, GNA – The World Bank has launched a regional strategy to transform health systems of Ghana and its neighbouring West and Central African countries, with the aim of improving health outcomes and supporting productivity and job creation.
Launched in Accra on Monday, the regional strategy is to unify frameworks and strengthen collaboration, helping countries to prioritise and make strategic shifts within constrained fiscal space to ensure the sector’s resilience.
The conference, opened by the Chief of Staff, Mr Julius Debrah, was attended by health and finance ministers from across the region, ambassadors, and development partners among other stakeholders.
The strategy, dubbed; “Fit to Prosper: Investing in health for jobs and development in Western and Western Africa,” is aligned with the Accra Reset Agenda, the Lusaka Agenda and the World Bank Group’s commitment to universal health coverage.
It also provides a framework to assist countries to advance the Africa Initiative for Medical Access and Manufacturing (AIM2030), supporting local manufacturing of essential health products, boosting health security, and creating jobs.
The regional health strategy comes as a response to the growing pressures faced by Western and Central African countries as financing tightens amid expanded health needs due to population growth, disease outbreaks, and climate shocks.
Opening the conference, Mr Debrah described the occasion as a pivotal moment in the shared mission to reframe health not as a cost to be managed but as the most powerful engine of economic transformation available to the continent.
“The future of our economies will not be determined only by what we extract from the ground – but by what we invest in our people,” the Chief of Staff said, noting that health was an economic strategy as a healthy population ensured innovation productivity, and resilience.
He lauded the World Bank for its US$4.4 billion commitment across 24 active operations in over 20 countries plus US$340 million in co-financing from partners like Gavi, the Global Fund, Japan, and Canada.
He noted that the support by the Bank was strengthening health systems, pandemic preparedness, and maternal and child health through coordinated programmes including West and Central Africa Health Security and support for Africa CDC.
On the part of Ghana, Mr Debrah said the country had been at the forefront of the global “Accra Reset” – a call to reshape the architecture of global health financing towards national sovereignty and self-reliance.
He announced that Ghana would soon launch a Country Compact with the World Bank Group, co-led by the ministries of health and finance, and anchored in clear priorities, measurable targets, and sustainable domestic financing.
Ms Mamta Murthi, the World Bank Group Vice President for People, outlined the scale of the challenge facing the region with stark figures, a condition she described as an enormous and avoidable drain on regional economies.
She stated that West and Central Africa accounted for 33 per cent of global child deaths, 44 per cent of maternal deaths, and nearly 60 per cent of all malaria deaths on the planet, while one in three children under five were stunted.
She identified the region’s growth in population, including more than 200 million children being born in West and Central Africa between now and 2050 as an opportunity and responsibility to unlock human capital to drive growth and jobs for the next century.
Ms Murthi’s said the regional health strategy rested on three priorities – strengthening frontline primary health care with energy, water, digital access, and trained community health workers; shifting to integrated national financing with strong domestic resource mobilisation; and building “Emergency-Ready Primary Healthcare” to stay functional amid 100+ annual disease outbreaks in the region.
She made the economic case directly to health and finance Ministers, noting that the returns from health investment delivered benefit-to-cost ratios exceeding 15 to one, while adults who receive nutritional support as children earned up to 46 per cent more over their lifetimes.
Dr Robert Taliercio, World Bank Division Director for Ghana, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, said the Accra Reset Agenda, championed by President John Dramani Mahama, showed a strong signal of charting a new path forward for African governments to assert their sovereignty in the global health arena.
“Ghana is one of only three countries in West and Central Africa to have improved health outcomes sufficiently to reach a stage at which a demographic dividend can be attained,” he said.
“We at the World Bank welcome the opportunity to support this agenda… We are currently preparing a new country partnership framework with the Government of Ghana to guide our partnership over the next six years.”
Ghana’s Minister of Health, Kwabena Mintah Akandoh, called on all parties to ensure that the document did not remain a well-written framework but translated into services for people to feel in their communities, clinics, hospitals, and household budgets.
The Minister reaffirmed Ghana’s commitment to Universal Health Coverage under its Roadmap 2020-2030, highlighting the country’s progress in that regard.
He stated that the Free Primary Healthcare initiative would remove financial barriers at the first point of care, while the Ghana Medical Trust Fund (MahamaCares) would support high-cost conditions including kidney failure and cancers.
“The Government of Ghana stands ready to work closely with the World Bank, sister African countries, development partners, civil society, the private sector and all stakeholders to ensure the successful implementation of this strategy,” Mr Akandoh said.
GNA
Edited by Agnes Boye-Doe