Alliance for Reproductive Health Rights (ARHR) has called for the collaboration of state and non-state actors to resolve gabs that affect essential health services delivery in the country.
Nii Ankonu Annorbah-Sarpei, the Director of Programmes, ARHR, said it was important actors knew the gabs in the implementation of the 2022-2024 health sector medium term development plan and collectively worked to redress them.
The health sector development plan seeks to address gabs inherent in primary healthcare, which is the pathway towards achieving universal health coverage.
He said understanding the gabs was necessary because the World Health Organization (WHO) had done a lot in bringing out weaknesses in the health system for redress.
Nii Annorbah-Sarpei made the call at a dissemination meeting in partnership with Ghana Health Service and the WHO on the Ghana Frontline Health Service Assessment report.
He said the survey would be done periodically to keep monitoring national response to the COVID-19 pandemic and come up with solutions to strengthen the sector.
The study conducted by the Ghana Health Service (GHS) in June 2021 sought to understand the level of preparedness of Ghana’s health facilities to manage COVID-19 and strengthen government action of mitigating spread.
Dr Cornelius Debpuur, the Deputy
Researcher at the Research and Development Division, Ghana Health Service, in his presentation, explained that the research was conducted from different levels of facilities across the country.
He said findings of the study showed that health worker protection and support was major concerns with a huge gap in the availability of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for staff.
A major gap in the training and support for staff was highlighted in addition to shortages of essential clinical tools and supplies in health facilities
Similarly, at COVID-19 treatment centres, there were inadequate medicines, oxygen, and ventilators as well as diagnostics equipment.
Additionally, COVID-19 diagnostic testing services in most facilities created long turnaround time for off-site testing.
The study further showed that the fear of COVID-19 infection was barrier to service use and fear of vaccine side effect persisted.
He said oxygen supply to the facilities was quite an issue and called for the establishment of medical oxygen plants in all health facilities to assist patients in times of need.
