Ghana needs to consider given appointment to patients – Twum-Nuamah

Dr Kwabena Twum-Nuamah, Chairman of Parliamentary Select Committee on Health has called for the need for the Ghana Health Service to consider the issuance of appointments to some category of clients to avoid long queuing at healthcare centres.

He attributed the long delays currently at the facilities to patients reporting at the same time at the facilities and urged the country to consider giving appointment to avoid such unnecessary delays.

Dr Twum-Nuamah was speaking at the launch of the SEND Ghana’s research entitled “Giving Patients Value for Money: Are Clients Satisfied with the Quality of Health Services”, which was conducted in 30 districts across the country to ascertain clients satisfaction with health workers.

The research covered three regions, namely, Greater Accra, Northern, Upper East and Upper West and over 2000 respondents were interviewed.

The research was under SEND Ghana’s “Making the Budget Work for Ghana Project” being funded by the Global Partnership for Social Accountability (GPSA) through the World Bank to improve access and quality of services in priority programmes in the health and education sectors in 30 districts in Ghana by strengthening accountability and transparency in the budget process by 2018.

Dr Twum-Nuamah also emphasised on the need to create the right environments in terms of infrastructure to address the issue of patients’ privacy at health centres.

“As a Country we must create attractive forces to attract health workers to accept postings to deprived areas. We must also be very frank as a country to interrogate the system and put things right. It is time we stop beating around the bush and fix the problems confronting our health workers,” he added.

Dr Linda Vanotoo, the Greater Accra Regional Director of Ghana Health Service (GHS), said the GHS was embarking on lots of programmes, including peer review mechanism to improve on healthcare delivery, especially at the customer care unit.

She said the Service was committed to ensuring that quality service was improved through adherence to the code of ethics and conducts.
Dr Robert Kuganab-Lem, Deputy Ranking Member on Parliamentary Select Committee on Health, emphasised on the need to look at policies that addressed the inequalities in the health sector.
He suggested the development of ICT systems to strengthen the country’s record structures.

That, he said, could be achieved through the use of ICT Graduates from the county’s universities, adding, “It is about time we encourage our young graduates to start developing little programmes to assist in the country’s socio-economic development”.

“In my opinion we need strong men to build strong institutions to move the country forward,” he added.

Mr Siapha Kamara, Chief of Party, P4H Project, SEND Ghana Consortium, said it was important for the tax payer to be empowered to hold policy makers accountable and urged the media to continue to set the agenda for policy makers to act.

He also urged the GHS to adhere strictly to its code of ethics and conducts and sanction those who would not work within it.