The Ministry of Health has held a five-day health summit to deliberate on issues related to health and take decisions for better health outcomes.
The health summit was on the theme, “strengthening the resilience of Ghana’s health system to better respond to emergencies.”
Speaking during the second day of the event, The Director-General of the Ghana Health Service, Dr. Patrick Kuma-Aboagye says as part of Ghana’s emergency preparedness with regards to pandemics there is the need to improve research in the bid to produce traditional medicines for infection treatment.
According to him, when research is improved, it will help produce safe traditional medicines that can very well supplement orthodox medicines when it comes to the treatment of diseases.
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“As a Health service, once we put any medicine out there, we are liable for that, and I think that should be looked at to ensure that whatever we are putting out there is safe and effective and that of which we can vouch for. I think that’s where the emphasis should go on how can we improve research to be able to get more of our traditional medicines to join the orthodox medicines,” he indicated.
On his part, the Deputy Director at the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), Dr. Ahmed Ogwell remarked, “when COVID-19 hit globally and particularly here in Africa last year, there was a lot of unpreparedness by our country and the continent. It is not willful unpreparedness. It is unpreparedness as a result of systems not been in place to be able to tackle that pandemic of the magnitude.”
Thus, speaking on how Ghana and Africa can build a resilient health system that can help deal effectively with pandemics, he stated that apart from building proper response plans, the resources at our disposal must be effectively utilized.
During the third day of the summit, the Minister of Health, Mr. Kwaku Agyemang-Manu also expressed worry over the delay in the setting up of an emergency fund for the country as stipulated in the constitution.
According to him the absence of the fund forces Ghana to always depend on other countries and international bodies for financial support whenever the country is hit by a health disaster citing COVID-19 as an example.
Mr. Agyemang-Manu therefore called on the various stakeholders in government to work together to establish the emergency fund adding that if these stakeholders together consider health as key to Ghana’s development, it will help them to do more to improve the nation’s health system.
He noted, “If all of us will accept that health becomes a critical ingredient in our development, we believe some ministers can even sacrifice money to do health. The COVID-19 pandemic should be a learning platform for us, that if we collaborate, we will do a lot more as a country for health.”
Source: ROSEMOND ASMAH/ATLFMNEWS
