Yieleh Chireh said he does not see any sense of urgency in the work of the Health Minister, adding that the Minister also seems not to be consulting professionals in his sector before taking major decisions leading to the numerous challenges facing the sector.

“…It doesn’t appear as if he is consulting, it doesn’t appear as if he is listening and he is too slow for the health sector in terms of what should have been done,” the Ranking Member added.

Yieleh Chireh, who is also the Member of Parliament for Wa West in the Upper West Region on the ticket of the opposition National Democratic Congress, made the observation in a Citi News interview on Tuesday in connection with the number of completed health projects that have been abandoned across the country.

Abandoned completed health projects

Citi News has in the last few days exposed a number of health projects undertaken by successive governments which cost the taxpayer several millions of dollars, but have been abandoned.

The major ones that have come up for mention are the $217 million University of Ghana Medical Centre, the Bank of  Ghana Hospital, the solar-powered medical centre at the Volo Digital Village in the Volta Region, as well as the GHc320,000 CHPS compound at Teshie which are all not in use.

With the University of Ghana Medical Centre, although the first phase has been completed, there is a tussle between the University of Ghana and the Health Ministry, as to who to manage the facility, with government saying it needs an additional $6 million to make it operational.

With regards to the Bank of Ghana Hospital, the Board is yet to take a decision on what module of management to adopt, although the facility was built in three years and largely completed in 2017.

In the case of the Volo Medical Centre, health professionals are unwilling to work there due to the lack of staff accommodation as well as the location of the facility.

Stop doing politics

Yieleh Chiereh in the interview with Citi News’ Parliamentary correspondent, Duke Mensah Opoku, further accused the Heath Minister of politicizing the issues in the health sector, hence their difficulty in addressing them.

“I have restrained myself from condemning people from the beginning; less than one year, but after one year there is no excuse at all. If you listen to the Minister of Health, he just didn’t want to take a decision to give credence to what has been done by the previous government. So when you politicize health then we have a problem.”

“Everything he has said is always political and it is not good for the country. He should engage and listen to the advice of this technical people – he is not a health person, he is an accountant and everybody will respect him if he does that,” Yieleh Chireh added.

We’ll summon officials over ‘abandoned’ health facilities

On the abandoned health projects, the ranking member hinted of moves to haul before Parliament heads of sector agencies that undertook various health projects, completed them, but have not opened them to the public.

Yieleh Chireh said his Committee will surely enquire from the sector departments the reason why these facilities are not in use.

“I have the duty to invite them to parliament; the committee will work on all these things. The controversies you have heard, the committee would have to call the various heads of departments to appear before the committee to find out what is the real issue,” he added.

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By: Godwin Akweiteh Allotey/citifmonline.com/Ghana
Follow @AlloteyGodwin

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The launch of the restoration of the nurses’ trainee allowance, set for to take place in Sunyani in the Brong Ahafo Region on October 10, will see about 58,000 trainee nurses and midwives receive their monthly allowance after they were scrapped in 2016 by the John Mahama government.

[contextly_sidebar id=”PEl8fZ14D7Ge6yik2OYYl67gC1zkX00I”]The decision to have an occasion just to symbolize the restoration has been criticized as simply a frivolous move from the government by some sections of the public.

The Minister of Health, Kwaku Agyemang-Manu, defended the launch, asking why the people would expect the government to restore the allowance quietly.

“We are launching [the restoration of the allowance] to demonstrate to Ghanaians that the government has honored its promise. We don’t want to hide in a room somewhere, pay the allowance and that is the end of it. Ghanaians should know what we are doing,” the Minister of Health stated to the Media after appearing before Parliament.

He stressed that, it was important “to communicate the good works of our President and that is why are we are launching. People are happy; they want to jubilate about it and we want them to jubilate about it.”

The trainee Nurses allowance was initially scrapped to allow the various training colleges to admit more students in a decision which was met with wide condemnation.

The National Democratic Congress (NDC) earmarked a students’ loan scheme in place of the allowance.

But the Mahama government had agreed to pay a reduced allowance for the trainees temporarily, until such a time that they are finally moved onto the students’ loan scheme.

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By: Delali Adogla-Bessa/citifmonline.com/Ghana

The post Nursing allowance can’t be restored without a ceremony – Minister appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.

The DHIMS, which was first deployed by the Ghana Health Service (GHS) in 2012, had been used for the collection and analysing of routine health service data, and operated in all the 216 districts.

It is currently available to all health facilities and service delivery points.

Over 10,000 users from government, quasi-government, private and faith-based facilities currently submit their service reports each month through the DHIMS 2 Dashboard.

The system was responsive to the needs of the service and users and could be used to track key performance indicators within the health sector.

Mr Agyeman Manu, who launched the facility at the first GHS Senior Managers’ Meeting in Accra on Tuesday, appreciated the hard work done by the Team that improved upon the DHIMS.

He said the improved facility was important for accurate data, particularly on death, which was crucial for population planning and estimation, accountability, and evidenced-based decision making for the health sector.

He called for effective supervision of the entire process, to ensure that health workers and professionals impute data accurately and timely to ensure the achievement of the expected objectives of the DHIMS.

The Health Minister used the opportunity to officially introduce himself to the Ministry’s stakeholders and health care professionals.

He pledged his commitment to sustain the collaboration that had existed between their institutions over the years, to ensure quality health care delivery.

He also presented his position outcomes as the new sector Minister, which included ensuring equitable and affordable access to health care, staff motivation and client satisfaction, and appealed to the health partners for support in achieving the expected results.

He promised to make use of his training background as an accountant to look for the needed funding to facilitate the work of the health sector for growth.

Mr Agyeman Manu said President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo had already demonstrated his commitment to improving access to health healthcare.

The Health Minister said President Akufo-Addo at the weekend charged the Minister of Finance Mr Ken Ofori-Atta, to immediately look for money to reimburse all service providers of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) and sustain such payments monthly, to save the system from collapsing.

Dr Anthony Nsia Asare, the Director-General of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), said the meeting would discuss among other things, the performance of the health sector in the previous year and strategise on addressing the challenges that confronted it.

He said funding remained a major setback to access to quality health care in Ghana, citing the challenges currently confronting the NIHS as worrying, and appealed to the ministry to quickly intervene to address the “panic” situation.

The GHS he said was currently consulting with the MOH to engage Part-time health professionals at the Regional health facilities, strengthen the use of Information and Communications Technology and its governance.

Introduce Tele-medicine and mobile health via the use of phones and connect the Community Health Care Planning and Services (CHPS) programmes to health Centres and teaching hospitals.

There was a joint presentation on the highlights of the DHIMS2 Dashboard and cause of death statistics by Mr Dominic K. Atweam, the Head of the Policy Planning Monitoring and Evaluation of the Centre for Health Information Management (CHIM), and Dr Samuel Buabeng also of the same Unit.

They explained that all health facilities collect service data from the community level and impute into the DHIMS2 online daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly per given schedules.

The benefits of the DHIMS, they said included the reliance on local data rather than international estimates and create a platform for information exchange.

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Source: GNA

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