NDC Government determined to eradicate malaria – Dr
Yankey
Accra, Feb. 18, GNA – Dr George Sipa Adjah-Yankey,
Minister-designate for Health, on Wednesday said under
his stewardship, the Ministry would set up a Malaria
Elimination Programme (MEP) to bring malaria to a level
that it would no longer become a health problem in the
country.
He told the Parliamentary Appointments Committee during
his two-hour long vetting that “it has been my dream to
eliminate malaria from this country and I will do it
when given the nod.”
Dr Adjah-Yankey, an Investment Lawyer, told the
committee that beyond eliminating malaria as a health
problem, he would also collaborate with his counterparts
within West Africa to completely eradicate malaria from
the sub-region.
The committee members could not hide their admiration
for Dr Adjah-Yankey after he had given very articulate
responses to questions ranging from National Health
Insurance Scheme (NHIS), health infrastructure, health
finance, guinea worm, maternal health care, mental
health care, herbal medicine, brain drain and health
tourism.
He was particularly commended for being the first
nominee to have referred to the National Democratic
Congress (NDC) manifesto and quoted from it to support
his responses.
Dr Adjah-Yankey noted that his passion against malaria
stemmed out of the fact that malaria treatment consumed
760 million dollars, which was 10 per cent of Gross
Domestic Product (GDP) for 2006, adding that one-third
of death in children was due to malaria and 45 per cent
of outpatient cases in the hospitals were malaria
related.
He said in spite of a vision to reduce malaria cases by
50 per cent in 2010 and by 75 per cent in 2015, there
did not seem to be a programme that dealt with the
disease at the grassroots.
Dr Adjah-Yankey said the MEP would be a holistic
approach that ensured early detection of the disease for
early treatment and also made use of biological means to
destroy the mosquito larvae at an early stage.
“I am of a deep conviction that malaria can be
eliminated and eventually eradicated from the sub-region
through collaboration with our sister countries,” he
said.
On the NHIS, he said the scheme was good and NDC
Government would continue with its implementation,
adding however, that the payment of premium annually
would be replaced with a one-time payment and access to
the scheme would be made universal no matter where the
people lived in the country, provided they were
qualified.
Dr Adjah-Yankey provided a detailed statistical analogy
on how the NDC Government arrived at its decision to
make the payment of NHIS premium once since Ghanaians
contributed to the scheme through subtle purchase taxes.
He said the NHIS would be computerised to ensure a
linkage between patient’s records, disease, diagnoses,
drugs required, cost of drugs and other records that
would make the system more efficient and payments to
service providers improved.
“We have plans to make the tax systems more efficient to
ensure that more money comes into the government kitty
to support programmes like the NHIS and to reduce the
burden on Ghanaians,” he said.
Dr Adjah-Yankey noted that the health sector in
particular was bleeding financially due to many
loopholes in the sector which made room for corruption,
saying he had identified many of those loopholes and
would work to seal them all and save the sector from the
financial haemorrhage.
Dr Adjah-Yankey said it was his vision to turn Ghana
into a health hub within the sub-region, through his
contacts around the world to bring in donors and
investors to turn some of the health facilities into
specialist centre of excellence.
“I intend to establish a health tourism programme where
Ghanaian health practitioners in the Diaspora would come
down within specific periods every year to offer
specialists services that people would have normally
travelled abroad for,” he said.
That he said, would save Ghanaians lots of money and
also attract foreign exchange from within the
sub-region, adding that it would be complemented with
incentives and good living conditions for health
practitioners to put the breaks on brain drain.
Dr Adjah-Yankey assured the committee that as per the
NDC manifesto, the Upper East, West and Eastern Regions
would be provided with befitting government hospitals
under his stewardship, adding that every community of
more than 500 inhabitants would also be provided with a
health facility while those less than 500 would have
mobile clinics.
He assured the committee that if given the nod, he would
take inventory of all health facilities in the country
decide with his team on what improvement they needed to
put them in a state to effectively support government’s
health programme.
Dr Adjah-Yankey told the committee that he would
collaborate with the administration of the University of
Ghana (UG) to consider turning the University Hospital
at Legon into a teaching hospital to ease the burden on
Korle Bu Teaching Hospital.
Touching on the extensive use of herbs by many
Ghanaians, he said herbal medicine would be integrated
into the national health care system to ensure the
required dosage was properly determined to prevent
abuse.
He said he would make budgetary allocation for the
rehabilitation of mental homes across the country.
GNA
PAF
