Kwaku Agyeman Manu
The Minister of Health, Kweku Agyeman Manu has promised that government will pay arrears of service providers of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) to cover service rendered up to June 2019 by September 2019.
According to him, government recently paid health service providers four months arrears and hopes the next batch to be released in September 2019 will cushion the service providers to be able to offer quality health care service to clients of the NHIS.
“NHIS was almost collapsed in the last eight years under the last NDC government led by former President Mahama. Now under the capable leadership of President Nana Addo we are working to make the Health Insurance work again. The President desires that, Ghana achieves universal health coverage. This is a government that cares.”
The Minister of Health was speaking at Fumbisi in the Builsa South District on the last day of President Akufo Addo’s tour of the Upper East Region.
“The President of Ghana has become a world champion, leading a crusade for universal health coverage at the United Nations General Assembly. Our President, together with the President of Germany and the Prime Minister of Norway have petitioned the World Health Organization (WHO), and that petition has forced the WHO to get an action plan that would be implemented to enable the world to achieve the SDGs, most importantly SDG 3, which talks about universal health coverage.
When we talk about universal coverage, we are talking about a situation where people can access health care without financial, religious, geographic or ethnic barriers and this is what we are running at the Ministry of Health, supported by President Nana Akufo Addo.”
The Minister of Health announced that the Upper East Region would be getting two district hospitals in 2020, while the Navrongo War Memorial will be see some renovation works, also in 2020.
The renovation work at the War Memorial will be very timely and needed, since the hospital’s main theater for example, has not seen any meaningful rehabilitation since 1911.
President Nana Akufo Addo in his parting message assured the people of Fumbisi that government would ensure that lives and businesses in the area get better, especially the agric sector, so as to improve on peoples incomes.
According to him, plans to establish an Agric Mechanisation Centre in the district to boost agriculture is still on course and hoped farmers in the area and others, who have come from other places to farm there, would take full advantage of the tractor services being provided through the Ministry of Food and Agriculture.
FROM: Ebo Bruce-Quansah, Fumbisi