He said such partnership apart from upscaling service delivery would also secure predictable health financing for long-term results on health outcomes for Ghanaians.

“We need to build sustainable partnership and create a harmonised agenda between government, private sector, academia, non-state actors and development partners to upscale service delivery and secure predictable health financing for long-term results on health outcomes for the purpose of Ghana,” he emphasised.

Mr Agyeman-Manu made the call at a research symposium organised by PharmAccess Foundation in collaboration with the Christian Health Association of Ghana (CHAG) in Accra last Friday.
The symposium was on the theme: “Leveraging partnerships and innovations to drive research for policy towards Universal Health Care (UHC),” and brought together high ranking professionals from the health sector including: pharmacists, doctors, directors and health financing experts.

Mr Agyeman-Manu said there was the need for the country to leverage on scientific and academic research as part of the strategies to achieving UHC in Ghana.

“Ghana will require leveraging the expertise of scientific researchers and academia working with national and global data platforms for the measurement, data collection and analysis of evidence for tracking UHC indicators and targets,” he stressed.

He noted that the evidence gathered from these researches could provide insights to design innovative strategies and revise existing initiatives to fully unlock Ghana’s potential to achieving UHC.

Mr Agyeman-Manu said in collaboration with strategic partners, his ministry, could disaggregate the UHC indicators to account for their equity efficiency ratios by geographical areas, income groups, educational levels, age, gender and vulnerability analysis.

 “We look forward to strategic partnerships with academic partners and researchers that will enable the Ministry of Health to measure and track progress in the implementation of the UHC strategies,” the minister noted.

He said Ghana’s over goal in terms of UHC was to attain at least 80 per cent coverage of Ghanaians having access to essential health services.

To attain this, he said “The Ministry of Health is aiming at these broad targets of 100 per cent health insurance coverage or primary level services, reduce maternal mortality ratio by two-thirds over 2017 figures and reduce by three-quarters neonatal, and child and adolescent disabilities among others.”

 The Minister commended PharmAccess Foundation for their contribution to health and national development, stressing that their strategic partnership was a guiding principle that was key to Ghana achieving UHC.

On her part, the Operations Manager of PharmAcces, Dr Gifty Sunkwa-Mills, explained that the objective of the symposium was to address the role of research in enhancing implementation and policy making for innovations in the financing and delivery of health care in Ghana.

She explained that participants were exposed to Continuing Professional Development (CPD) points for their training requirement with a special emphasis on digital health system interventions in Ghana.

This she said was being implemented with various key stakeholders such as the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) and Christian Health Association of Ghana (CHAG).

Dr Sunkwa-Mills also indicated that the symposium offered case studies presentation and panel discussions that would ensure exchanges on lessons learnt and best practices, bridging the gaps between research, operations and policy making.