Health Minister calls for public, private sector collaboration

The Minister of Health, Ms Sherry Ayittey, has called for a collaboration between the private and public health sectors to enable them to deliver quality health care in the country.

She stated that the potential for complementary solutions was to include the private sector in health care delivery.

She said this during the celebration  of World Health Day in Accra on Friday .

The annaul event was not the theme “ Hypertension is a silent killer; check your BP”

Ms Ayittey said it was important to modify local policies and regulations to foster the role of  the private sector in health care.

Touching on the theme for the celebration, Ms Ayittey said high blood pressure also known as hypertension, was a risk factor for Non Communicable Diseases (NCDs), especially cardiovascular diseases, which many people were having for years without knowing it.

“High intake of salt, overweight and obesity, lack of physical activity, harmful use of alcohol and tobacco use are factors that increase the risk of developing hypertension” she said.

She, however, stressed that high blood pressure was preventable and treatable and could be reduced by reducing salt intake, eating a balanced diet, undertaking regular physical activity, maintaining a healthy body weight , avoiding the harmful use of alcohol and tobacco use.

“Hypertension is of public importance in Ghana and, therefore, needs urgent developed strategies to prevent, detect, treat and control hypertension effectively in the country” she said.

Ms Ayittey announced that the Ministry of Health had developed a Non Communicable Diseases Control Policy and Strategic Plan, which outlined the policies and strategies for control of NCDs including hypertension and other cardiovascular diseases for the next five years.

She indicated that it was important to develop and enforce quality of standards in health care delivery to prevent counterfeit and poor drugs, under trained providers and unhygienic facilities must be eliminated from  the system.

“It is important we strengthen national drug regulatory authorities and also increase regional collaboration, mutual recognition and harmonisation of regulatory standards in the ECOWAS regions” Mrs Ayittey said.

She emphasised that regional standards and processes for drug registration facilitated the entry of high quality products, these and other measures to educate patients would facilitate healthy living.

The programme manager for Non Communicable Diseases, Dr Kofi Nyarko, stated that up to 70 per cent of persons who took part in the screening exercise had been identified to have hypertension.

According to him, some of them were not aware they were hypertensive and, therefore, were not on treatment.

He advised that regular check up for high blood pressure was very important.

Story: Mary Ampeh