Dr. Samuel Kaba Akoriyea
The Ghana Health Service (GHS) has been thrown back to the paper era after its cloud provider, Akamai, suspended its account on October 29, 2026, over outstanding hosting bill costing $64,510.95.
The situation has forced health facilities and districts across the country to revert to paper-based health information reporting.
The shutdown has further disrupted several operations across the health service.
District Health Information Management System 2 (DHIMS II), which supports national health information management, is unavailable for data entry, validation, analysis and report extraction.
The Planning and Budget Management Information System, used for accessing plans and budgets, has also been affected.
The National Malaria Data Repository, the events system for inpatient morbidity and mortality, SMS alerts, the transport system and the Community Health Information Management portal are also among the affected platforms.
The shutdown has additionally interrupted the data-exchange gateway responsible for transmitting birth notifications to the National Identification Authority and the Births and Deaths Registry.
Meanwhile, other systems including eTracker, the Family Planning and Health Care platform, Operational Training and Supervision Support assessments and the Non-Communicable Disease tracker are unavailable through their web platforms, although their Android capture applications can continue operating offline.
The HIV and tuberculosis trackers, as well as the ISRS sample tracker, have also lost web access and laboratory integration, although their Android applications remain functional offline.
Paper Returns
In an internal memo dated November 2, 2026, GHS Director-General, Dr. Samuel Kaba Akoriyea, confirmed the shutdown and ordered all facilities and districts to revert to paper-based reporting to save October and November 2026 data.
“Facilities and districts should keep completing registers and monthly summary forms on paper so that October and November 2026 data can be entered once DHIMS2 is restored. Regional and district health information officers should file the forms by facility and month,” he stated.
Dr. Akoriyea said the GHS was finalising arrangements with Akamai and seeking approval for a payment of $64,510.95 to reinstate the account. He appealed to the sector minister to support efforts to expedite the approval.
The memo outlined two possible routes to restoring the systems. The first is to reinstate the existing Akamai account by settling the outstanding balance.
According to the Director-General, this would restore all systems to their previous state without requiring them to be rebuilt and represents the quickest option.
The second option would involve procuring new servers and rebuilding the systems using existing backups, but could take up to six weeks after the required capacity is procured, leaving the systems offline throughout the reconstruction period.
“Android tracker users continue capturing data offline for upload once service returns,” the memo stated.
“Once services are restored, the Service will plan any move to a Ghana-based provider as a controlled project. That project will include a parallel run and a funded backup arrangement,” Dr. Akoriyea stated.
Until access is restored, facilities and districts are expected to rely on paper-based reporting and offline data capture to maintain the collection of health information.
A Daily Guide Report