The JEE is a tool under the Internal Health Regulations (IHR) which allows for the World Health Organisation (WHO) to assess  a country’s capacity to prevent, detect and rapidly respond to public health threats  on their own.

Dr. Ambrose Talisuma, a team leader of the JEE of the World Health |Organisation, African Region  said the external evaluation discovered that Ghana, in spite of the challenges it was confronted  with, had a robust animal surveillance system but needed to boost the capacity of its health workers.

The evaluation, according to him, noticed that Ghana’s public health emergency and operation centre, which is a structure within the Ministry of Health, had not been well established saying, “Ghana needs real political commitment to develop plans and policies.”

Dr. Talisuma said the evaluation also observed that Ghana had a strong epidemiology training programme, which trains Ghanaians, Gambians and Liberians.

“Ghana needs to update its health plan before the end of the year to enable the WHO assist by lookingfor resources from development partners to address it weakness,” he said.

Dr. Badu Sarkodie, Head of Public Health at the Ghana Health Service, said Ghana did quite good in some of the 19 action areas it was accessed on, as it scored two and three out of the total marks of five in most areas.

The JEE meeting was attended by development partners and key stakeholders of Ghana’s health sector.