Chairman of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Health Dr. Mark Nawaane has noted with concern the challenging state of some health facilities in the country.
In Ghana, significant efforts have been made to assess the state of health facilities and services to strengthen the country’s progress towards UHC.
One such effort is the Harmonised Health Facility Assessment (HHFA), which was conducted in 2022.
But there remain challenges. Recently, the Health Minister Kwabena Mintah Akandoh as well as the Parliamentary Select Committee on Health have been visiting some selected health facilities to ascertain their state.
The findings by both groups have not been encouraging.
Speaking to the media on the sidelines of the Coalition of Parliamentarians to End Malaria (COPEMA) first regional meeting in Accra, he intimated that although some of the challenges require national solution, others could be handled by the hospital managements with Internally Generated Fund (IGF).
He also spoke about the challenges with inadequate human resources at the health facilities following their tour of some health facilities.
‘‘Some of the challenges require national solution. In other words, there must be a response from the Ministry of Health, from the Ministry of Finance, etc. But there are also some issues that they can solve it at the local level. When an equipment spoils, you would expect the hospital management to fix them with IGF since people are using the facility and paying.
“And when we did our rounds, we also realized that, for example, staffing, there was, I mean, there was an inadequate staffing in all the hospitals. All of them were crying for staffing, and we’ve got a lot of graduates- nurses, doctors, so I am advocating for some form of differential financial clearance for healthcare workers who are willing to be posted to work in the remote area,” he suggested.
