Current Poor State of NHIS & NPP Gov’t’s Continuation Of It…..Concerned NHIA Officers Are Asking, Where Is MR AMPONG DARKWAH?         

The President Nana Akuffo Addo stated in his State of the Nation Address delivered to Parliament on Tuesday, February 21, 2017 that ‘’We shall restore the National Health Insurance Scheme to good Health’’ Who starts to do that for the President?

The President Nana Akuffo Addo after introducing the Minister of Health in January 2017 to Ghanaians and touching on NHIS also told Ghanaians among others that the Health Insurance needs somebody with Mathematics and Finance/Economics backgrounds with good knowledge on the operations of the National health insurance to help solve the problems there.

Mr Darkwah’s coming into the scene in February 2006 when the national health scheme was seriously tumbling with the initial district arrangement in the Law, helped a lot. Most of the major service providers like Korle Bu Teaching Hospital etc had not all registered with the national scheme. His technical and managerial explanations to these hospital managers led all these service providers to register with the national scheme. He led most of the key technical and managerial training programmes for scheme officers and managers nationwide. In fact, it helped greatly to lift the scheme up. We remember between 2006 and 2007, Mr Darkwah led the training of over 800 national service persons at the Local Government Training Institute in Accra and integrated them into the scheme’s operations nationwide. His central holding role in the scheme at the time helped greatly. He chaired numerous interview panels between 2006 and 2008 that brought some top skilled officers and managers into the scheme among others.

Mr. Ampong Darkwah resigned in May 2009 from the national scheme for further studies at a time when the Ghana Health Insurance Scheme had won commendations from major international financial bodies including the World Bank. ‘’(World Bank and NDPC reports on Ghana NHIS-- At the country level, NHIS contributed significantly to reducing extreme poverty in Ghana from 28.5% in 2006 to 18.2% in 2008 (MDG: 2008 GPRS Report by NDPC, Pg 4) )’’ Key findings from the assessment reveal substantial positive effects of the scheme on a number of aspects of health care delivery in Ghana. For example, the proportion of those who consult skilled health care providers for general health conditions rose from 45% to about 62% between 2005 and 2008, with the implementation of the scheme (Pg 56).

For us, the NHIS needs Mr Darkwah at this time to take us to the next level by evolving strategies for the scheme to run efficiently again, which it did between 2006 and early part of 2009 for which the World Bank and other global financial bodies recommended the Ghana Health Scheme to other developing and developed countries to understudy.

We learnt that somewhere in 2012, the South Sudan Ambassador to Ghana who was looking for architects of the Ghana Health Insurance Scheme to help his government establish one was directed to Mr Darkwah. We also heard Mr Ampong Darkwah and his team visited South Sudan at the invitation of their Government through their Ambassador in Ghana in 2012/3, to do feasibility studies and to establish the National Health Insurance in his country. The South Sudan Government made available their national economic data to them to study and come up with a model for them, which they did. A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between his team and South Sudan Government was developed for them to study. Unfortunately, the country’s leadership crisis put all this arrangement on hold.

Mr Ampong Darkwah was appointed Schemes and Membership Coordinator at the Operations Division of the NHIA in March 2008 with the key responsibility of coordinating activities of all the schemes in the country. His duties included the management of membership drive and general reporting of data for the NHIA. By dint of hard work, he managed to evolve strategies to bring the inconsistencies and problems in the management and reporting of data on membership under control, within his short stay at the division which led to a clearer build up and direction on the management and reporting of membership information

He had earlier on (Febuary 2006 to February 2008) assisted the CEO to take and implement technical and managerial decisions.

His (Mr Ampong Darkwah’s) Memorandum to Parliament of Ghana in July 2011 during the passage of the new Health Insurance Law by NDC Government, he stated and defended before the Parliamentary Select Committee on Health, Leadership of Parliament and in the presence of all experts in the area of health and finance in the country, that the proposed one time premium payment will never work and will only stay in the books. Apparently, this has been the case among others.

Between 2003 and 2006, Ampong Darkwah worked with Mckof Ltd., a leading Health Insurance Consultancy firm in Ghana, which contributed significantly to the setting up of Health Insurance Schemes in not less than Thirty-One (31) districts across the Country. All these schemes have since developed into fully operational Health Insurance Schemes, effectively registering and processing claims for subscribers. All these schemes have been absorbed into the NHIA as district branches.

Mr Darkwah obtained an MBA Degree (Finance) from the School of Administration, University of Ghana, Legon in 2005, with a thesis on “Health Insurance And Accessibility To Health Care In Ghana.” Through this work, he accumulated in-depth knowledge of Health Insurance as a viable option for health financing in Ghana. Before then he had obtained a BSC degree in MATHEMATICS at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in 1997 after his Ordinary and Advanced Levels of education. He is currently pursuing a distance education programme, which is expected to lead to the award of a PHD in Economics. The thesis topic is The Anatomy Of Public Policy Implementation. This will help further sharpen his expertise in the area of guiding economic directions and policy implementation in institutions.

He played a major role in evolving the earlier policy framework seeking to implement a single NHI system in Ghana in May 2001, at the request of the then Minister of Health. In the following year, that is, in 2002, it was given a district focus under the leadership of Dr Kwaku Afriyie who took over from Dr Richard Anane in the latter part of 2001 as Health Minister with Dr Akor as coordinator at MOH, which was passed into Law in September 2003. The district model has been changed again in the new law in 2012 into the original single model outdoored in May 2001 by the first Health Minister in President Kufour’s Administration, Dr Richard Anane for ease of implementation. This process of change began in 2007 by a committee set up by the then NHIA administration and chaired by Dr Atugubah. Mr. Ampong Darkwah was a key member of the core team of experts government put together in April 2001 that helped Government with the original model of the National Health Insurance scheme outdoored in May 2001 by the then Health Minister Dr Richard Anane in Nkoranza, which is currently running the National Health Insurance Scheme.

In 1999, Mr Darkwah was co-opted into a team of foreign consultants that had been contracted by SSNIT to undertake feasibility studies into the establishment of a health insurance scheme in Ghana.

Mr Darkwah is currently leading a team to put together the history of the evolution of the National health insurance Scheme. The history write up is about 50% complete and will soon be launched as reference material for other countries to learn.

Mr Darkwah has outlined the way forward to get us out of the problems the National Health Insurance Scheme is currently encountering.