Health Ministry Set To Improve Primary Healthcare

The Ghana Health Service (GHS) and the Ministry of Health (MOH) is set to launch a strategy to improve the nation’s basic healthcare delivery system the following year.

The Networks for Practice approach, which operates at the sub-district level and involves hospitals, clinics, maternity homes, and ambulance services, aims to ensure that all parties involved in peoples’ health care (whether public or private) operate as a total health family rather than as individuals or silos.

When a health facility in a particular region requires, say, a patient’s life-saving medication but does not have any, all it can do is ask a nearby facility (public or private) to provide it in exchange for compensation later.

Similar to this, it should be simpler for a health facility within a given geographic area to invite workers from other nearby health facilities to participate in training or seminars it is hosting for its employees or doctors.

Following the start of a three-day Network of Care Technical Meeting hosted by the World Health Organization, Dr. Alberta Biritwum-Nyarko, Director of Policy Planning, Monitoring, and Evaluation at the Ghana Health Service, revealed this in an interview with members of the media (WHO).

The Network of Care

The Network of Care is a cutting-edge strategy to improve the performance of healthcare systems.

It is a method of bolstering current health systems to enhance links and relationships between the many categories of health workers in order to increase the effectiveness and operation of the current health system.

Ghana has implemented a Network of Practice that incorporates aspects of the Network of Care method to enhance primary healthcare on a national level.

Universal Health Coverage

Dr. Biritwum-Nyarko provided additional information about the Network of Practice approach, stating that in order for the country to achieve universal health coverage, primary healthcare had to be strong, and one way to do this was through the Network of Practice strategy.

According to her, the strategy was tested in two districts in the Volta Region in 2018 and is currently being used in six districts across the nation.

The strategy was expanded nationally, according to Dr. Biritwum-Nyarko, because the service indicators from the two districts where it was trialed were favorable.

In addition, she stated that all regional and district directors had been informed of the strategy and that they were working behind the scenes to prepare how to assemble the networks in advance of the nationwide implementation that will take place the following year.

The MOH adopted the Network of Practice as a model to improve access to all essential services, including maternal and child health, first at the primary healthcare level, with a bigger objective to connect to the secondary and tertiary level of care, according to a speech read on behalf of the Minister of Health, Kwaku Agyeman-Manu.

As a matter of fact, she stated that all regional and district directors had been informed of the strategy and that they were working behind the scenes to prepare how to assemble the networks in advance of the nationwide implementation that will take place the following year.

Conclusion

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