The Northern Regional Director of Health Service, Mr John Bertson Eleeza, has pointed out that in efforts towards achieving universal health coverage, there was the need to adequately mobilize the needed resources from all stakeholders.
He said these resources when effectively deployed would result in cost effective interventions together with stakeholders so as to strengthen the health system and sustain essential health services.
This was during the opening ceremony of the 2023 annual performance review meeting in Tamale on the theme “sustaining essential health service delivery towards achieving universal health coverage: the role of stakeholders in resource mobilization”.
Mr Eleeza said it was important to solicit the views of stakeholders and their support in a review meeting towards achieving objectives.
According to him, Human Resource situation in the region recorded some improvement within the year under review especially for medical doctors due to the continuous financial clearances granted by Government.
He said the region as at the end of 2023 had 335 medical doctors with 275 (82%) at the Tamale Teaching Hospital but currently have 50 medical doctors within the Ghana Health Service facilities which is an improvement from 30 medical doctors as at the beginning of the last quarter of 2023.
He said in an effort to attract more medical doctors to the region, Municipal and District Assemblies were being encouraged to support them with incentives and decent accommodation facilities and that the region has achieved the nurse to population ratio which currently stands at 1 Nurse to 396 as against the National Target of 1 Nurse to 450.
Mr Eleeza further said malaria case incidence per 100,000 decreased from 27,971 in 2022 to 22,836 in 2023 whiles the under 5-year malaria death rates in our hospitals stagnated at 0.03 per 1000 in 2023 despite interventions such as the Indoor Residual Spraying, the use of Insecticide Treated bed Nets and the Seasonal Malaria Chemoprevention among other interventions.
Touching on the Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI), the Director said it continued to be one of the priority programmes for the Ghana Health Service hence services provided under this programme recorded some decline during the period under review due to some challenges associated with service delivery.
Additionally, Mr Eleeza indicated that the coverage of Penta3 for the under the one-year-old infants slightly decreased from 113.4% in 2022 to 93.1% in 2023 and expressed gratitude to all stakeholders and developmental partners for their support in helping protect the children.
Edem Agblevor, ISD
