Almost three years after the incident, no one has been prosecuted or held liable despite suspicion of arson.

The incident, which occurred in 2015, caused the country to lose about 80 million dollars worth of medicines and medical supplies.

[contextly_sidebar id=”bNaQLxAb7yKMmgZU5ZtedbaS4jVbgIZW”]Speaking at a Meet the Press series on Thursday, the Minister for Health, Kwaku Agyeman-Manu, said government will take the needed action after the completion of the forensic audit.

“The CMS [Central Medical Stores] fire and investigation report has been submitted to the Auditor General upon his request. I think we were talking too much about Central Medical Stores – where is the report and why are we not responding.?  So the Auditor General called for a copy of the report, and as we speak, he is finalizing due processes to conduct a forensic audit of the report, and when that is completed, he will advise and make recommendations and that is what government, I believe, will have no option than to implement.”

The Minister said the forensic audit was captured as part of recommendations made by the committee that investigated the fire in 2015.

“In the report that I saw, it was put in it that, there should be a forensic audit, and therefore without forensic audit, I don’t think much could be done. But he is taking his time to do open competitive bidding to select a consultant who will do that work, and that is causing us some little bit of delays, but I believe that very soon, that will come to conclusion.”

New Central Medical Store not insured

Meanwhile, in a rather bizarre revelation, the Chief Director at the Ministry of Health, Dr. Afisah Zakariah, has said the refurbished Medical Store has not been insured against any unfortunate incident.

“The place we are renting is not insured and insurance companies are feeling reluctant to insure it. However, the ministry is making efforts to acquire our own [place]. We will soon get our own central medical stores which definitely, we shall insure because we learnt bitter lessons from the event of the Central Medical Stores. We’ve written to all our agencies so that all regional medical stores could be insured and this has been done,” she added.

Background

The Central Medical Store was razed in 2015, and preliminary investigations blamed it on arson.

In 2016, 12 officials of the Ghana Health Service who were accused of playing various roles in the arson were also interdicted, but the status of the case is not yet known.

Before the fire, there were reports that then Health Minister Dr. Kwaku Agyeman-Mensah, had initiated investigations into allegations of corrupt practices at the store.

UK Parliament worried over Central Medical Store fire

A former UK High Commissioner to Ghana, Jon Benjamin, in June 2017, disclosed that the UK Parliament was concerned about the Central Medical Stores fire.

According to him, the UK pumped about 4 million pounds worth of medicines into Ghana, which were destroyed in the fire, hence the UK Parliament’s seeming interest in the case.

“In the Central Medical stores, there were 4 million pounds worth of medicines bought by the UK through our DFID programme that were there and were destroyed and we had to account for that money and questions were asked in the UK Parliament. So we had to say what had happened and what was being done about it. So I think that was a legitimate reason for us to raise our concerns,” added Jon Benjamin.

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By: Godwin A. Allotey & Naa K. Siaw-Marfo/citifmonline.com/Ghana
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This is in spite of reports that the phase 1 is largely complete and ready for use, but the government is in a tussle with the University of Ghana over who should manage the hospital.

[contextly_sidebar id=”8WxAyF8iyWe6ij2y4mbTiuJv2q8tjs44″]The sector minister, Kwaku Agyemang Manu, who made the announcement today [Thursday] at the Ministry of Information’s meet the press session, said the government is committed to ensuring that the medical facility commences operation, and becomes a hub for medical tourism after its completion.

“Plans are underway to operationalize the University of Ghana Medical Center after the completion of Phase 1, which is still not completed. Efforts are underway to complete phase one for operationalization. A cabinet memo has been submitted to cabinet for consideration to procure $50m for completion of Phase I, and development of Phase 2, which will consist of neurology, pediatrics surgery unit, VIP maternity care with assisted reproductive technology center, IVF and day care surgery, facility for cardio and open heart surgery, additional surgery for medical training, robotics center, commercial out-patient pharmacy, provision of substation to boost power supply and staff housing, 32 bedroom apartments. That is likely to begin and be the first base for health tourism in Ghana,” he said.

Concerns have been raised about why the facility remains unused, although it was commissioned by former President John Mahama to begin operation in 2016.

Background

Citi News gathered that, the first phase of the Medical Centre, which was completed in November 2016, is yet to be operational following disagreements over the legitimate manager of the facility.

In 2012, government signed a contract with Messrs. Engineering and Development Consultant (EDC) of Israel to build the first phase of the facility and hand it over to the university.

The university designated 400 acres of land for the entire project.

Sources closely involved with the project revealed to Citi News that, following this contract, another agreement was signed between the Ministry of Health and the University of Ghana in 2015, which gave ownership of the $217 million facility to the university.

But the Ministry of Health in recent times, is laying claims to the facility, leading to uncertainties over who has the responsibility to manage the centre.

Thus, staff recruitment has stalled, and ultramodern medical equipment lie idle as they collect dust.

Meanwhile, the National Council for Tertiary Education, has said the challenges have been resolved, and the facility is expected to comment operation next year.

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By: Jonas Nyabor/citifmonline.com/Ghana

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This adds up to the over 16,000 nurses already admitted into the health sector.

[contextly_sidebar id=”ZlhCHokIpTSJK7jxriVhVaRfoHlySbpY”]“So far this year, we have employed just about sixteen thousand of these nurses who were sitting home. In the course of this week, we got financial clearance to add two hundred and thirty-six more,” he said.

In a bid to help nurses who were trained in private health institutions, the Minister confirmed that a request had been sent to the Ministry of Finance for financial clearance.

“We have [sent a] request to Finance to enable us also recruit some of those sitting at home who did their training in private schools, and God willing if we get that one in the course of the next months left for the year to end, we will continue to recruit them,” he noted.

Speaking to Citi News, Kwaku Agyeman Manu said provisions have been made in the next budget for the recruitment of trainees from private nursing schools.

“If we are not able to do that, come next year we have done adequate budgetary allocations, all of them will come on board,” the Minister of Health explained.

Quota system to limit unemployed nurses

The government’s introduction of a quota admission system for nursing trainee schools, was to help improve the quality of nurses in the country, according to the Ministry of Health.

The Ministry believes this will allow training institutions to produce nurses to meet the demands of the health sector, thus reducing unemployment.

Speaking to Citi News on the new development, the Public Relations Officer of the Health Ministry, Robert Cudjoe, explained the impact the quota system will have on the nursing training schools.

“Some schools that were taking less last year are taking more, and some that were taking more are now taking less, simply because we did an analysis and came to the conclusion that some schools don’t have the facilities to admit the number that they have been recruiting and that is compromising quality,” he said.

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By: Ann-Shirley Ziwu/citifmonline.com/Ghana.

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The Minister at a press conference stated that “his ministry has appealed to the Finance Minister to release funds to enable their clearance and posting which the Minister for Finance Ken Ofori Atta is currently working on.”

[contextly_sidebar id=”FlYdc3pejNg2wq0Z98yJAX2AbJ0TFrAK”]He further complained about the constant picketing of the nurses at his ministry which he described as indiscipline and threatened to involve the security apparatus if persuasion fails.

Mr. Agyemang noted that government has recruited 14,566 nurses who graduated from 2012 to 2016.

The minister added that, nurses starting from next year will apply for jobs in the health sector without the assistance from the government.

Minister of information Mustapha Hamid, present at the press conference also appealed to the nurses to exercise patience.

The president for the Association Federick Baah however, responded positively to the proposal from the minister and promised to be patient with the minister while he works on the procedures for their recruitment.

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By: Gifty Tracy Aminu/citifmonline.com/Ghana

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According to him, the proposal had a clear roadmap to paying the debt or reducing it to the barest minimum.

“…We were aware of the debt that was going to come, we were aware of the payments and we had a formula and system to deal with. But unfortunately there was a change of government and they [NPP] made all manner of promises that they had clear plan to deal with it. The question now is that what is the plan for the current government?”

[contextly_sidebar id=”CrNmj3qNeBAXQWkLzJMicbjbcZu1kEEG”]Mr. Segbefia made the remark on the Citi Breakfast Show on Friday in relation to a claim by the current Health Minister, Kwaku Agyeman Manu who complained that the NPP government is struggling to clear the over GHc100 million debt left by the Mahama-government in the sector.

“…The bottom line is that the previous government has committed debts not in the Ministry of Finance, just Ministry of Health…There is a debt overhang of close to about 134 million Ghana cedis as at the end of December 2016…The little goods and services that we got this year, we had to pay out of 53 million, 43 million to ensure that we pay for co funding to give us vaccines so that is the grim situation,” the Minister said.

But speaking on the Citi Breakfast Show, Mr. Segbefia said the NDC government envisioned the debt and strategized on how to deal with it.

The former Health Minister explained that during their time in power, the NDC government made ten percent of total NHIA allocation to the Health Ministry for the clearing of debts of essential vaccines and other commitments.

He added that the NDC government also decided to make some allocations from the petroleum levy to support the NHIA to bridge it funding gap but could not implement it because they were kicked out of power.

“The way we got round this was that when the NHIA pay, ten percent of the amount paid to the NHIA is made available to the ministry to deal with issues such as this. And so we had put in place a system whereby funding for payment of essential vaccines were to come from allocations which was given to NHIA.”

He said they realized that “if we got all the money, because of the increased uses of the NHIA, all the monies that were coming from the formula we would still have a funding gap or shortage within then NHIA.”

“It is for this reason that the NDC-led administration decided and you heard it in our manifesto that we were going to take money from the petroleum levy to add to the existing NHIA bill which would have also increased the ten percent that was supposed to given and would deal with this payment that we have make for the essential drugs and also give the NHIA the extra funding that it requires,” he added.

He however called on the current Minister to implement the proposal or better still implement recommendations from a report commissioned by the Mahama government into the NHIA on how to increase its revenue.

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By: Godwin Akweiteh Allotey/citifmonline.com/Ghana
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The post We had a plan to clear GHc100m NHIS debt – Alex Segbefia appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.

Mr. Agyeman Manu had indicated that the Mahama-led government had overseen an GHC 800 million debt at the National Health Insurance Scheme [NHIS}, leading to a withdrawal of services by some service providers.

[contextly_sidebar id=”OIOiueFpVl78mQGkYOS7Y8CSp8Gk1l9C”]He added that he was unsure when the arrears would be cleared.

However, according to Mr. Yieleh-Chireh, the Minister did not make an attempt acquire the data required to answer the question despite the fact that the said request had been made two weeks prior to the encounter.

Speaking on Eyewitness News on Thursday, the former Health Minister stated that the current Minister’s unpreparedness led to a number of evasive answers when he addressed the House.

“My question to the Minister was for him to tell Ghanaians about what the government has done about outstanding payments to service providers. If he was prepared to answer the questions which it appeared he wasn’t he’d have told us the amount outstanding, the amount paid so far and what’s left. He didn’t any of this at all. The purpose was to get information,” he said.

“I don’t expect a Minister to have all this information in his head but this question was posed about two weeks ago. He could have asked the agencies responsible, to provide up-to-the-minute data on how much NHIS had paid to service providers.”

Mr. Yieleh Chireh said the Health Minister had no excuse for not having appropriate responses to the question posed as he could have inquired from the responsible agencies.

“If as a Minister, you are asked a question and the answer is in the Upper West Region, you’ll ask your agencies with the answer. The NHIA is in Accra so if there is a request for the state of the scheme he should be able to get it. The Minister didn’t make the effort to get the information. That’s my understanding,” he added.

“As soon as I posed the question, he would talk from his head and that’s not done. You are telling the whole of Ghana that this is what the Government has done so far. The question was when the outstanding debts are going to be settled but he didn’t indicate anything clearly. The Minister must be reading from an official script because we are talking about figures and payment to people. I didn’t see any official of his in the Chamber. Anytime a Minister is asking questions there’s an official there to support and supply answers the Minister doesn’t have.”

‘No urgency from Gov’t’

The President, Nana Addo Dankwah Akufo-Addo, stated in June that his administration was working towards clearing the debts of the scheme within the next 18 months.

Parliament also approved the formula for the disbursement of the National Health Insurance Fund for 2017.

However, according to Joseph Yieleh-Chireh, the government hasn’t shown much urgency so far in clearing the NHIS’ debts to service providers despite it being a major issue during their campaign ahead of the elections.

“The NPP campaigned on this problem so I expected them to have urgency in dealing with the matter systematically but how many weeks did it take them to set up a Board? If they wanted to sort out the problem of payment, the first thing they would have done was to set up a Board to look at the payments but they didn’t do that. The urgency with which you handle the matter shows that you want to solve it.”

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By: Edwin Kwakofi/citifmonline.com/Ghana

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Speaking in his role as Chair of the PCB for 2017, the Minister of Health of Ghana, Kwaku Agyeman-Manu, said, “Through our pledge we demonstrate our willingness to contribute to the fight against the disease.”

The contribution makes Ghana one of the leading African donors to UNAIDS and follows recent commitments on funding for UNAIDS by other African countries. On becoming the Chair of the PCB earlier in 2017, Mr Agyeman-Manu stressed that Ghana would work closely with UNAIDS to achieve the collective goal of ending AIDS by 2030.

The Executive Director of UNAIDS, Michel Sidibé thanked Ghana for its pledge. “Ghana’s pledge of US$ 200 000 for UNAIDS is another example of Africa increasing its investment in the AIDS response,” he said. “Shared responsibility is vital if the world is to meet its commitments to ending the AIDS epidemic by 2030,” he added.

About UNAIDS

The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) leads and inspires the world to achieve its shared vision of zero new HIV infections, zero discrimination, and zero AIDS-related deaths. UNAIDS unites the efforts of 11 UN organizations—UNHCR, UNICEF, WFP, UNDP, UNFPA, UNODC, UN Women, ILO, UNESCO, WHO and the World Bank—and works closely with global and national partners towards ending the AIDS epidemic by 2030 as part of the Sustainable Development Goals.

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Source: UNAIDS

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This, she said, was because successive governments had failed to demonstrate true political will and commitment to improve on national immunisation.

Interacting with Mr Kwaku Agyemang-Manu, the Minister of Health on the sideline of a fund raising campaign to support immunisation at Dormaa-Ahenkro in the Brong-Ahafo Region, Ms Darkwah called for urgent establishment of a National Immunisation Fund.

Ms Darkwah who is the Chief Executive Officer of Human Care and Maintenance Foundation, an NGO, said the fund was needed so that the country could continue with its immunisation exercises after donors had pulled-off.

She explained child health related issues must be given the needed attention to help curb infant and child deaths.

Mr Agyemang-Manu reiterated that the government was working assiduously to establish the Fund, saying that would help the various health directorates to undertake immunisation exercises.

He added that very soon the Ministry would distribute free treated mosquito nets to households, while the aged would also be registered under the National Health Insurance Scheme.

Mr Agyemang-Manu observed that improving national immunisation was a shared and collective responsibility and therefore urged NGOs to support that cause.

Earlier, Ms Otiko Afisa Djaba, the Minister for Gender, Children and Social Protection said 11 million children died globally annually, adding that in Ghana, five babies died out of 250 babies born every day.

She said the government was putting in place pragmatic measures to ensure drastic reduction of infant and child mortalities and also improved on the National Health Insurance Scheme well.

Ms Djaba advised parents to always send their sick children to health facilities, instead of seeking medication at herbal centres.

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Source: GNA

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Last Monday, a letter addressed to Dr. Anaba directed to him hand over to the Public Services Commission three years short of the expiration of his tenure.

[contextly_sidebar id=”4Y9djGtpRsLMi3kKe16DrgKzYFYapfRq”]Although no reasons were given, the letter said the directive was from the Health Minister who has subsequently appointed Dr. Anaba’s predecessor, Emmanuel Kwabla Srofenyoh.

Asked whether he will be considering suing the Minister for  his decision , Dr. Anaba responded in the affirmative, saying “yes it is one of the options.”

He added that his lawyers had already began processes that will lead to a lawsuit.

I’m not affiliated with NDC

Dr. Anaba , who suspects his transfer stems from the suspicion that he is affiliated with the National Democratic Congress (NDC) insisted he never campaigned for the party in the Garu Tempane constituency in the Upper East Region during the 2016 general elections as it has been alleged.

“I never campaigned for the NDC in that constituency. There was no Dr. Anaba anywhere in Garu campaigning during elections. There is one Thomas who they are getting confused about so they should check their facts very well.”

My transfer was in bad faith

He further stated that his transfer was done in bad faith.

“It was not done in good faith because if you want someone to leave his job, there must be a reason. The terms of engagement explains what should happen for me to be disengaged , transferred or relieved but all these were not met.”

“I have a contract and the contract is four years with possible renewal and I have made up my mind psychologically with my family that we are staying in Accra for at least four years…I have concentrated all my efforts in Accra so how do you come and stop all that without giving prior notice? I think it is unfair,” he added.

According to him, the Minister, Kwaku Agyemang Manu cannot transfer him as it is the Ghana Health Service that appointed him.

Minister acting on orders of contractors

He also alleged that the Minister acting on the instructions of the contractors working at the hospital, hence the failure to provide cause for the transfer.

“How can a construction company advise a Minister on who to manage a hospital. Is it because I put pressure on them to procure all that they needed for the contract?If it is so I will be happy to leave.”

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By: Marian Ansah/citifmonline.com/Ghana
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The hospital referred to the as the Greater Accra Regional Hospital was built by the Mahama administration with a $250 million credit facility from the US Exim bank and HSBC Bank.

John Mahama inaugurated the first phase of the project in November 2016 but the hospital remained closed.

Following the opening of the 420-bed facility by the Health Minister, some 47 patients had the opportunity to experienced health care at the hospital.

Official records say 3 patients in critical condition were revived at the emergency ward, while 20 received care at the pediatric department.

14 others received care at the family medicine department.

The Minister of Health at the opening of the facility indicated that government will seek funds to complete phase two of the project.

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By: Godwin Akweiteh Allotey/citifmonline.com/Ghana
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