HEALTH SECTOR REVIEWS PROGRAMME OF WORK (PAGE 14)

The Minister of Health, Dr George Sipa-Adjah Yankey, has opened a four-day conference in Accra to review the health sector programme of work.
Dr Yankey explained that even though the health sector made some progress last year, it was still behind the schedule in meeting the Millennium Development Goals of ensuring health for all by 2015.
He said there were indications that the health sector had performed creditably in a number of areas such lowering fertility rates and dropping infant and child mortality rates, with supervised deliveries exceeding the 50-per cent mark.
He, however, said the existing levels of poverty and health inequity would continue to widen the disparity in health outcomes if health workers did not take a moral stance against them.
The Health Minister said Ghanaians would not forgive health workers, if they spent most of their time solving management issues such as remuneration rather than seeking their health and welfare.
He explained that the use of modern contraceptives and nutrition, especially among children, remained areas where the health sector was yet to make the required impact.
He said it was unacceptable that 28 per cent of Ghanaian children were malnourished, while 78 per cent of children under five years had some level of anaemia.
He expressed the hope that health workers would focus their attention on the development and implementation of programmes that would enable the health workers to deliver health to the people.
Dr Yankey said the ministry had decided to invest more resources in malarial control programme for the elimination of the disease in the country.
This will save the country the annual recurrent expenditure of $720 million on malarial treatment.
Dr Yankey said the country would make a quantum of savings if malaria could be eliminated completely as it had been done in several countries.
He explained that the Ministry of Health had been running malarial control programme for sometime now and the time had come for the stepping up of intervention measures to put the country in the elimination mode.
The minister noted that it required a huge operational and financial outlay but considering the savings in both economic, health and social terms, there was no better investment in the health sector than the total eradication of malaria.
Dr Yankey said the Ministry and Ghana Health Service were gearing up to elevate the control measures on sustainable basis, as well as additional measures that would enable the country to graduate to the point of sustained elimination.
Mrs Akua Sena Dansua, the Minister for Women and Children’s Affairs, who chaired the function, and the Minister of Health used the occasion to jointly launch the Gender Policy of the Ministry of Health, which aims at enabling women and men to realise their full potential and participate as equal partners in creating a just and prosperous society.