The forum, organised by the WHO would determine whether health services are available and whether people could afford to use health services when they need them.

Speaking at the forum, Dr. Neema Rusibamayila Kimambo, Acting World Health Organisation (WHO) Representative to Ghana, said Ghana made a strong political, legislative, and fiscal commitment to reforming its health system to achieve Universal Health Coverage (UHC).

It also implemented several reforms that included; the introduction of a public health insurance programme for its population and earmarked significant revenues to finance the scheme.

However, Ghana would need to mobilise additional revenues for the health sector by adopting sustainable fiscal space expansion mechanisms.

Therefore, Dr Kimambo said pooling arrangement would be critical, specifically strategies to expand population coverage with the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) from its current 40 percent.

She said the link and respective roles between funds for the NHIS and those allocated by the MOH directly to healthcare facilities needed to be clearly defined and aligned to enhance efficiency.

"There is therefore the need to enhance the stewardship of health financing system through harmonised policies and strategies on the part of the MOH and improve coordination of development partner support," she said.

Mr Kwaku Agyemang Manu, the Minister of Health, said UHC addressed health care from equity and human rights perspectives, adding that, if it was well implemented it would facilitate health care financing.

He said the MOH was leading the country in the UHC roadmap of 2020 to 2030 to achieve universal health coverage of the Sustainable Development Goal on providing universal health care for all.

He said a comprehensive and coordinated approach was needed to achieve Universal Health Financing, and raising more funds for UHC was imperative, especially domestic funds.

Mr Manu called for effective use of domestic funds, saying "we also need to think about innovative ways to expand our services to generate money internally for local health financing."

He noted that Ghana had 85 health training institutions and could capitalise on that by exporting the chunk of health workers trained in the institutions abroad to rake in foreign exchange, which could be channelled into domestic health financing.

The Minister said Ghana was in the process of situating its health care services abroad, and had started the process to export nurses to Barbados and other Caribbean countries.