'Ghana needs to implement healthcare policies effectively’ - Badu Akosa

Professor Agyeman Badu Akosa, a former Director-General of the Ghana Health Service (GHS) has said Ghana needs to implement healthcare policies effectively to improve the lives of people.

He said Ghana has workable healthcare policies but statistics available has proved the implementation has been unsuccessful.

“Ghana has a lot of very good policies but unfortunately we are not able to implement them like we should. I think we prevaricate on so many things… and the kind of statistics that are coming out tells us we are not moving as fast as we should,” he said.

Prof. Akosa said this in an interview with the Ghana News Agency at a public lecture organised by Webster University, Ghana on the theme: “Healthcare Policy and the Crisis of Public Health in Africa.”

He said the failure of Ghana to properly implement her healthcare policies posed serious threats to the citizens and the future, which must be addressed holistically.

“The dangers are that Ghana as a lower middle-income country has almost over 40 per cent of its children not properly nourished and that has major consequences on their cognitive abilities and their development as the future leaders of this country,” he noted.

Dr Naa Ashiley Vanderpuye-Donton, the Managing Director of International Health Care Centre (IHCC), said the country was ineffective in the implementation of the policies because they were “technically good but a bit out of context.”

“I think if we want to get things working we have to step up our research efforts. And we need to ensure that the research is leading to data that is informing us on what solutions we should put together.”

Prof Jean-Germain Gros, Visiting Faculty (USA), Webster Ghana, said Africa’s healthcare policies had evolved over the years but had been challenged by the fast-growing population.

Mrs Martha Amankwah, Director of Enrollment Management at Webster University, Ghana, said more of such lectures would be organised to illicit views from experts on how to tackle health and social issues affecting the people.

Webster University Ghana was established in 2013 and has received accreditation from both the National Accreditation Board and the Higher Learning Commission of the United States.

The Ghana Campus is also the first in sub-Saharan Africa in Webster's 102-year history.

Webster University, is an American University based in St. Louis, Missouri, and has a network of American-style residential international campuses in nine countries spanning over four continents.