Quality healthcare is a shared responsibility - Dr Nsiah-Asare

Dr Anthony Nsiah-Asare, the Special Advisor on health issues at the Presidency, has urged stakeholders to see quality healthcare delivery as a shared responsibility in which they must play an active role. Dr Nsiah-Asare, who is a Former Director-General of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), said there was the need for collaboration towards achieving the universal health coverage to attain a quality healthcare delivery for all citizenry.

He was speaking at the 2020 edition of ‘Our Public Interest Conversation Series’ organised by the Passionate Africa Leadership Institute (PALI) Ghana to discuss and suggest ways of improving Ghana’s quality healthcare delivery. He said the country had only a decade to achieve the universal health coverage hence the need for all stakeholders to get involved because the quality of healthcare is very important.

“It doesn’t matter the number of hospitals we build in the country …the number of doctors and nurses we train, if the patients and their relatives don’t accept the care that we are giving, it means it is of low quality,” Dr Nsiah-Asare said. He said the patient, relatives of patients, healthcare personnel, government, private healthcare providers, and all actors are part of the process to building a quality healthcare system in the country.

In a speech read on his behalf, Mr Kwaku Agyemang Manu, the Minister for Health, said achieving universal health coverage was the country’s topmost priority and the Ministry was working towards its achievement. He said the Ministry had in effect, reviewed the national health policy, which inspired the universal health coverage for the country to ensure that all people living in Ghana had access to timely high quality health services irrespective of their ability to pay at the point of use of service.

The Minister noted that the Ministry was in the process of developing the basic minimum requirement and ensuring adherence to level specific emergency services. He said the Ministry was also zoning and mapping the health provider patient ratio to improve access in quality health delivery across all sectors and would engage all stakeholders in the mental health sector to increase awareness and advocacy.

Mr Frank Paa Kumi, the Founding President of PALI-Ghana, said the discussion served as an opportunity to create awareness on the National Healthcare Quality Strategy, a document drafted to improve health care delivery, with a lifespan of 2017 to 2021.

He said there was the need for the citizenry to be aware of what existed in the public healthcare delivery chain to properly guide every patient on the operational processes in accessing quality healthcare service.

Mr Kumi said creating awareness on the National Quality Healthcare strategy would help the citizenry to be abreast with the facilities they had to contact at every point in time of the healthcare delivery value chain and system.