MINISTRY LAUNCHES HEALTH SECTOR GENDER POLICY (PAGE 11)

The Minister of Health, Dr George Sipa-Adjah Yankey, has announced that Ghana was still lagging behind in its effort to attain the objectives of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
According to the minister, currently the level of poverty and disease burden among a larger proportion of the population was still high, stressing that although the Ministry of Health (MoH) recorded remarkable progress and success in various areas of disease interventions last year, other crucial areas such as the rate of malnutrition, anaemia and high malaria reports among children were unacceptable.
Added to this problem is the country’s institutional maternal mortality rate of 250 per 100,000 live births and the increasing cases of violence against women, which pose an obstacle to the achievement of equality, development and peace.
The minister made these comments at the opening of a five-day health summit in Accra on Monday.
To propel the ministry to speed up health interventions for the vulnerable groups of the society for better outcomes, the MoH in collaboration with the Ministry of Women and Children’s Affairs (MOWAC) has jointly launched the Health Sector Gender Policy, to enable it to mainstream gender into all its policies and programmes to address the numerous challenges that confronted the health sector.
The chairperson for the health summit and MOWAC Minister, Ms Akua Sena Dansua, launched the gender policy, which aims at enabling women and men to realise their full potential and participate as equal partners in creating a just and prosperous society.
She called on women to feel at ease in patronising services at health institutions and explained that the launch of the Gender policy would help improve the health status of women and children, who formed the largest clients of the MoH and the Ghana Health Service.
She noted that with the institution of the gender policy, the MoH would be in a better position to improve the needs of women and children in society.
Dr George Yankey, the Minister of Health, who assisted Ms Dansua to launch the gender policy, said the ministry had endeavoured over the past 15 years to be put together a gender policy by recognising gender equality as a legal right.
He said the ministry had witnessed at first-hand gender inequality emanating from the social, cultural and historical construct in the country.
He said some of the inequity, which include the feminisation of HIV/AIDS, the threat of violence against women and the perceived feminisation of poverty, had presented a complex and diverse challenge to policy makers in the health sector.
He said because of its complex nature, the challenge had also provided policy makers with the opportunity to put in place an integrated and multi-pronged policy that would shape the work of the MoH in the national pursuit of gender equity and equality in the country.
The minister of health said under its gender policy the Ministry of Health regarded violence against women as an obstacle to the achievement of equality, development and peace, stressing that “we have, therefore, linked health services to such victims with the provision of remedial services through education”.
He said the policy would be instrumental in advancing the gender agenda in the country by outlining an integrated package of institutional structures and the co-ordination of a framework through which partners could work with the ministry to advance the gender cause in Ghana.