Ministry of Health and Partners Sign Aide Memoire to end 2016 Health Summit
Mr Andrew Karas, the USAID Ghana Mission Director, on Friday, led a team of health partners to sign an Aide Memoire to climax the 2016 Health Summit, held in Accra.
The document between the Ministry of Health (MOH) and the partners emanated from the business meetings of the summit and contains resolutions, re-affirmations and commitments of the partners towards the sector’s goals of providing quality healthcare for Ghanaians.
It is also to assist the health sector with interventions to address the challenges identified for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Mr Karas commended the MOH and its Agencies for a well organised, productive and successful Summit, which was on the theme: “Working Together Towards Universal Health Coverage, Consolidating the Gains of the Health-Related MDGs”.
The Summit, he said, presented the health sector and its partners, stakeholders and civil society an opportunity to review the sector’s performance over last year and assess whether the levels of performance conformed to the levels of investment made over the period, or not.
He said some of the critical issues discussed were the expansion of Community-Based Heath Planning and Services (CHPS), Emergency Preparedness, as well as the transitioning from the Millennium Development Goals to what was needed to attain the SDGs, which were of immediate relevance to the sector in 2016.
“The Summit did not also shirk away from tough issues at hand, such as health financing, the supply chain and human resource management, we are in a new era as we wholeheartedly embrace the path towards the Sustainable Development Goals… and our shared conviction to ending preventable child and maternal death,” he said.
Mr Karas said hence, strategic interventions, decisive actions and evidence-based innovation must be the cornerstones of all their interventions, and urged the MOH to redouble efforts to deliver on its mandate of creating a healthy and productive population to contribute to socio-economic development.
He also pledged the collective commitment of the development partners to work closely with the Ministry to support its defied priorities.
“We remain committed to our shared principles of transparency, accountability and measurable results… and we will continue to work with you… to ensure these value be upheld in all that we strive for together,” he said
Mr Alex Segbefia, the Minister of Health, said the Ministry shared in all the concerns raised in the aide memoire, particularly, on the poor performance of some key health indicators and the need to accelerate the implementation of the CHPS strategy.
They would, therefore, work with stakeholders to ensure the successful implementation of the policy.
He said to get some of the action points in the aide memoire implemented would, however, require extra budgetary resources, and indicated that he would put forward a proposal for implementing aspects of the aide memoire action points at the Ministry’s next meeting for consideration and possible support.
The Ministry, said he would on its own also look internally to see what it could do to re-prioritise and re-allocate some resources to ensure that progress was made on the action points contained in the Aide Memoire.
He urged the partners to aid the Ministry in its quest to improve health care delivery by providing appropriate technical and material support and also jointly monitor the progress of the implementation process.
GNA