Ghana Health Service holds seminar for its directors

Ho, July 12, GNA - Mr Kofi Dzamesi, the Volta Regional Minister, on Tuesday said the success of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) depended on effective supervision and monitoring by the Ghana Health Service (GHS).

He urged managers of the Service to collaborate and constantly supervise and monitor service delivery at all levels as service providers.

Mr Dzamesi m ade the call in a keynote address read on his behalf at the opening of this year's Senior Managers' Meeting (SMM) of the GHS at Ho.

The four-day meeting which is on the theme "Strengthening support and supervision systems and setting the tone for the third programme of work" brought together all regional and district directors. Mr Dzamesi advised managers to eschew autocratic tendencies, apathy and all other forms of negative tendencies that would be detrimental to the success of the NHIS.

Prof Agyeman Badu Akosa, the Director General of GHS in a speech read for him, said the service recognized the multi-dimensional nature of health to national development.

It is putting mechanisms in place to make service delivery result-oriented by paying attention to equity, efficiency and sustainability.

He said the service was committed to working with partners including development partners, the private sector, other ministries, departments, communities and individuals to ensure a healthy nation.

Prof Akosa mentioned the challenge of scaling up priority interventions to attain the Millennium Development Goals and effective implementation of the NHIS as part of the four basic challenges facing the service. On the NHIS, he said the service was committed to its success in all districts and expressed the hope that the government would play its role by releasing funds to meet the challenges of its implementation. Dr Andrew Arde-Acquah, Volta Regional Director of GHS, said the supervision and monitoring from the national to the regional level to the district and sub-districts had not been the best.

He said realizing that, the region initiated some measures to strengthen its supervision and monitoring systems to achieve better performance.

Dr Arde-Acquah said observations made during their monitoring visits indicated that inadequate number of staff was one of the major causes for the low performance in the service delivery.

He said although they had been fortunate in experiencing a low rate exodus of trained staff to other countries, there is a high number of ageing staff whose performance is on the decline and would soon retire from the service.