By Iddi Yire
Accra, Dec 10, GNA – Ghana has always been committed to improving maternal and child health outcomes through the development of policies and programmes that have high impact to ensure the efficient functioning of the overall health system.
Mr Kwaku Agyemang-Manu, the Minister of Health, said much of the nation’s health problems were centred around sexual, reproductive, maternal, newborn, child, and adolescent health; and that there was the need to pay more attention in these areas to safeguard the vulnerable population.
The Minister stated this in a speech read on his behalf at the opening of the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Network of Care (NoC) Technical Meeting in Accra.
During the meeting, participants will hold discussions on pertinent issues such as maternal, newborn and child health, and the role and ground-breaking interventions of the WHO, as well as prospects in the aforementioned areas of health.
Mr Agyemang-Manu said ending preventable maternal and prenatal mortalities remains an unfinished agenda and one of the world’s most critical challenges they need to address now and more so for Ghana.
He said maternal health, well-being and survival must remain a central goal and investment priority for especially those in developing and middle-income countries.
Dr Agyemang-Manu said Ghana’s pluralistic health sector was structured in a decentralized manner and had been designed through a pro-poor lens.
He said the health delivery system was decentralized and was organised on a three-tier level: Primary, secondary, and tertiary, corresponding to district, regional and teaching hospital levels.
He said this structural arrangement provides Ghanaians with the opportunity to tailor their intervention along these lines and to further connect them in a manner where service delivery and other activities of the health system were well connected seamlessly.
He said however, despite these arrangements, there were still weaknesses in the operationalization of service delivery, infrastructure development, human resources distribution and utilisation of referral processes.
He said Primary Health Care, which was the bedrock of the health system in Ghana and critical for the attainment of Universal Health Coverage was provided at the district level where most of the nation’s morbidity and mortalities were more prominent.
“In this regard, we have invested more in our Primary Health Care programming through Community-based Health Planning and Services, quality of care improvement methods and National Health Insurance Scheme to bridge access and inequity gaps over the years.”
He said access to quality maternal and child health services were also crucial to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.
He said the international technical meeting on the NoC was a value addition strategy and complimentary to Ghana’s Network of Practice with similar objectives to improve health systems functioning.
Dr Francis Kasolo, the WHO Representative to Ghana, in a speech read on his behalf by of the WHO Ghana Office, said as the global community works towards reaching the SDGs and accelerating improvement in maternal and newborn survival through primary health care to achieve universal health coverage, we need to explore innovative approaches. One such approach is a Network of Care.
He said a NoC for maternal and newborn health was a collection of public and/or private health facilities and health workers deliberately interconnected to promote multidisciplinary teamwork and collaborative learning to provide comprehensive, equitable, respectful, person-centred care from home/community to primary, secondary, and tertiary levels.
Dr Alberta Adjebeng Biritwum-Nyarko, Director; Policy, Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation Division, Ghana Health Service, said the NoC was undoubtedly an innovative approach to enhancing health systems performance, especially at the Primary Health Care level.
“As a technical working group, we need to create a common understanding of what characterizes and fosters an effective NoC to drive the improvements and strengthening of our national health programs,” she said.
“Having a common understanding of the Networks of Care model can help guide us to move our health service delivery efforts towards outcomes that can benefit all stakeholders as well as reduce inefficiencies and inequities emanating from fragmented services and barriers to access.”
She noted that as countries were managing the post COVID-19 pandemic era and reinforcing measures to ensure the population has timely access to quality essential health services, the Networks of Care approach shall be a catalyst for comprehensive, patient-centred, coordinated services targeted at the improvement of the health of the people.
GNA