Achieving universal health coverage: Agenda 111 must succeed

Ghana's quest to achieve universal health coverage (UHC) by the 2030 target received a major boost last Wednesday when President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo inaugurated two new hospitals in the Ashanti Region.

In Ghana, universal health coverage would mean that all people in the country have "timely access to high quality health services irrespective of the ability to pay at the point of use", as espoused by former Minister of Health, Kwaku Agyeman-Manu, on December 12, 2019.

It refers to increased access to quality essential health care and population-based services for all by 2030. This target is a minimum requirement for decent living for the average person in the country in terms of access to health care.

Some of the improvements that will come with the attainment of UHC is the improvement in the doctor-patient ratio in the country. Overall, the density of medical doctors in Ghana stood at 1.4 per 10,000 inhabitants in 2020.

This falls far below the standard of the World Health Organisation (WHO). The global health body recommends a doctor to population ratio of 1:1,000. The wide ratio gap is worsened by the departure en mass of medical doctors and nurses, in particular, from the shores of Ghana to Europe and America recently.

While this could have something to do with financial motivation, we do not discount the role of infrastructure, facilities and logistics as contributory factors to the emigration of doctors and allied health professionals from the country.

This is why those two new hospitals are important additions to healthcare infrastructure in the country's push to achieve the UHC by the 2030 target. It was satisfying to hear from the President that the Agenda 111 hospital projects are also being tackled by the government simultaneously with other health infrastructure, while the completed Ashanti Regional Hospital at Sewua would be inaugurated soon to be in operation.

Agenda 111 is an ambitious plan to build 111 hospitals across some districts in the country. It is perhaps the biggest expansion plan in Ghana's health infrastructure.

Along with the basic benefit of improving access to health care across the country, it will open the employment space for medical doctors, nurses, pharmacists, laboratory technicians and other allied health professionals.

It means the backlog of any groups of health professionals awaiting employment could be cleared within a short space of time. This is beside the variety of professionals, including those in the building industry, whose technical expertise will be employed for the projects.

By the time the construction process is completed for each of the hospitals, the financial commitment would have stimulated the economy. This is expected to empower local professionals and expand the frontiers for further expansion of small businesses to employ more people, particularly youth with artisanal skills.

The President's words mean that the focus on health infrastructure extends beyond the Agenda 111 projects. In fact, the Afari Military Hospital, also in Kumasi, and the Salaga District Hospital in the Northern Region, already advanced in construction, also require attention.

We acknowledge that the health infrastructure expansion plan was one of the promptings driven by the realities exposed by COVID-19 when it struck the country in 2020.

At the dawn of the pandemic in Europe and America in particular, it was feared that Ghana’s modest health facilities could be overwhelmed.

The Ga East Municipal Hospital, a new facility at the time, however, came in handy, along with the infectious disease centre inspired by people in the civil society space.

As Ghana survived, it has not reduced the urgency and necessity of the projects. This is why the government must work to deliver as many of the facilities as possible.

It might be challenging to complete all of them within the tenure of President Akufo-Addo, but this is not one of the projects that must be allowed to rot in the bush when the administration that initiated it leaves power.

Just as the current government has completed and inaugurated the Fomena and Kumawu district hospitals initiated in 2012, succeeding administrations must make Agenda 111 tangible showpieces of national development.