A non-governmental organization, SEND-Ghana, is advocating for adequate financing in the various health facilities in the country.
This comes on the back of their latest report revealing a shortage of doctors in the three northern regions.
The report titled, “making safe motherhood a reality: the issue of financing”, revealed a wide doctor to patients ratio in the three regions of the north.
[contextly_sidebar id=”G9OPLEhPk2QtPQ4VoSsjKS5voiAVYVr2″] In an interview with Citi News, Lead Researcher and Programme Officer for SEND Ghana, John Nkrumah, attributed the situation to inadequate funding to the health facilities.
He said in 2013, many health facilities in the three regions of the north, did not receive government funds on time and others did not get any funding at all from the government.
He also cited the doctor to patient ratio as a critical challenge and said that more doctors should be trained with more incentive packages for them to accept postings in the regions normally considered unattractive.
A Member of the Select Committee on Health and Member of Parliament for Berekum East, Dr. Kwabena Twum Nuamah, also urged government to increase its budgetary allocation to the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) to cater for expenses in the various health facilities.
He acknowledged that the returns on revenue had not increased as expected hence the difficulties with the implementation of the free maternal deliveries.
“When the health insurance started with this free maternal delivery, it was very smooth because they had enough money to be able to take care of the expenses that came along with it. But because the economy had not grown the way we all expected, we’ve not been able to increase the revenues as we all expected; so because of that, they are running into difficulties.”
He therefore called for government’s intervention to enable the NHIS make enough money to take care of their funding arrangements in order to provide better healthcare for their clients.
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By Delali Adogla-Bessa/citifmonline.com/Ghana