The government of Japan has signed a 4.5 million dollars three-year Project Agreement with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to support Ghana’s healthcare delivery digitisation project.
The project dubbed: “Digital solutions for health, nutrition and medical services” is aimed at strengthening the use of digital technology for health, nutrition, and medical services in the country.
It is being implemented in partnership with the Ministry of Health (MoH), Ghana Health Service (GHS) and Japanese private sector Consortium (NEC, Sysmex and The Ajinomoto Foundation).
Speaking at the signing ceremony in Accra on Thursday, the Minister of Health, Mr Kwaku Agyeman-Manu said the project followed the Memorandum of Co-operation (MOC) signed in 2019 between the MoH and Government of Japan, as part of Japan’s Africa Health and Well being Initiative (AfHWIN).
The initiative was aimed at strengthening collaboration and enhancing health promotion, supporting prevention, control, and treatment of Communicable and Non-Communicable Disease (NCDs) and strengthening private-public partnership on health.
He said the project was timely and vital since it would help improve the use of digital solutions in the health sector.
“Indeed, this project is also very timely and relevant, because as we all know, the use of digital solutions to improve health outcomes has gained increasing significance especially during this COVID-19 pandemic,” he added.
Mr Agyeman-Manu said the project was in line with the government’s strategy to expand the use of digitisation within the heath sector, adding “Strengthening the use of digitisation will ultimately enhance the efficiency of healthcare delivery and accelerate the country’s efforts towards Universal Health Coverage (UHC).”
He noted that, the project would support the nationwide rollout of the E-Tracker and improve overall health service delivery by strengthening collection, analysis, utilisation and management of health and human resource for health data for better programming and decision-making.
“NCDs are increasingly becoming a huge menace in Ghana and thus, I am also particularly interested that this project will also support the country’s efforts to address the rising menace of NCDs and support behaviour change within communities,” Mr Agyeman-Manu stated.
The Health Minister expressed gratitude to the Government of Japan for its immense support towards attaining UHC in the country.
The UNDP Regional Director for Africa, Ms Ahunna Eziakonwa, said her outfit was delighted to partner the Japan government to strengthen and improve health outcomes in the country.
She reiterated that the project would scale up the distribution of the E- tracker at national and sub-national levels and expressed optimism that the project would contribute meaningfully to improve health outcomes and the attainment of the Sustainable Developmental Goals.
The Japanese Ambassador to Ghana, Mr Tsutomu Himeno, for his part said the Government of Japan considered health, nutrition and medical services as vital elements that enhanced human security and safeguarded dignity, to which it gave much focus, and pledged their continuous support in promoting UHC in the country.
BY VIVIAN ARTHUR
