The Youth for Global Finance Facility (Y4GFF) was on Friday launched in Accra to build capacities of youth-led organisations to gather data to help play advocacy in strengthening the country’s health system for improved healthcare delivery.
Launched by Youth Advocates Ghana (YAG), the implementing agency, the 12-month project, seeks to bring youth-led organisations to share valuable lessons and best practices, fostering youth engagement in healthcare.
The key thematic areas of the project are building capacities of youth-led organisations to promote evidenced-based advocacy in Sexual Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn Child and Adolescent Health (SRMNCAH+N) and Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs).
The YAG-led project is being funded by PAI, and it is in collaboration with the Ghana Health Services and the Ghana Education Service, for efficient and effective delivery of implementation plans.
Launching the project in Accra, the Executive Director of YAG, Emmanuel Ametepey, explained that the project is being funded by Global Finance Facility, a country-led global partnership dedicated to the wellbeing of women, children, adolescent, adding that it would be carried out in the Greater Accra Region over the next 12 months.
He said the GFF was a mechanism of the World Bank institution to enable the countries that signed up to the project, including Ghana, to strengthen their health system and boost their local resources mobilisation so that funds that would have gone waste or not have been raised, would now be generated and dedicated to the GFF through the “health system strengthening.”
The GFF, he further explained sought to pluck all leakages to boost revenue generation to raise enough resources for some to be dedicated to Ghana’s “investment case.”
The investment case for Ghana from 2022-2025, according to the Ministry of Health and GHS, should be centred around women, children and adolescents towards the realisation of the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 and Universal Health Care.
“That is why we are focusing on reproductive, maternal health newborns, child nutrition. So the investment case is the ideal situation, an issues that you have identified that you want to solve but because you don’t have funds, you are not able to solve them,” Mr Ametepey said.
Susan Akanbong, Programmes Manager of YAG urged the youth-led organisations to strengthen the capacities, especially in data collection to be able to play an evidenced-based advocacy for improved healthcare delivery in the country.
At the launch were the community-based youth-led organisations, officials of GHS, GES and other stakeholders.
