Mahama highlights measures to address financial barriers in healthcare delivery

President John Dramani Mahama has highlighted the measures that his admi nistration has intdiced to address the issue of financial barriers in healthcare delivery.

Delivering a keynote address at the 79th World Health Assembly (WHA) in Geneva on Monday May 18 , he said that Ghana has moved beyond rhetoric to implement calculated, aggressive policies that place the citizen at the centre of the clinical encounter.

With one of the more successful National Health Insurance Schemes in Africa, Ghana has an insurance coverage estimated at 66% as of the end of 2025. This leaves about 34% without cover, he said.

Besides, the NHIS has been focused principally on curative care, with very little attention to preventive care, he added.

To mop up the remaining population not covered by the NHIS, President Mahama said that "we have recently successfully begun implementing our Free Primary Health Care Programme.

"By removing financial barriers to the most basic and essential services at the rural level, we have ensured that our citizens in the remotest regions of our country also enjoy access to quality health care, on par with their urban counterparts."

He further expressed gratirude to the World Health Oragnisation (WHO), led by Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus, who was among the first to congratulate the government of Ghana on achieving this significant milestone.

"We have revitalised our National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS). By removing the cap on the health insurance fund, we immediately freed up an additional GHS 3 billion, equivalent to $300 million, for healthcare investment.

"We have also streamlined NHIS operations by eliminating bottlenecks, utilizing digital tools, including AI, to detect fraudulent claims, and, most importantly, prioritising prompt refunds to service providers," he said.

President Mahama further said that a health insurance scheme is only as strong as the trust between the state and the hospitals that provide the care. By ensuring our providers are paid on time, we ensure our citizens are treated with dignity.

"We have also confronted the rising tide of non-communicable diseases by launching the Ghana Medical Trust Fund, also known as MahamaCares. This fund is a lifeline for those suffering from NCDs cardiovascular conditions, cancers, liver disease and renal failures that were previously a death sentence for the poor.

"MahamaCares is ensuring that specialised, high-cost care is not a privilege for just a few, but a right for all."

He also stated that Ghana is on track to exit the GAVI funding for vaccines by 2030.

Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance is a public-private partnership that helps vaccinate more than half the world’s children against some of the world’s deadliest diseases.

The Vaccine Alliance brings together partner country and donor governments, the World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF, the World Bank, the vaccine industry, technical agencies, civil society, the Gates Foundation and other private sector partners.

Since its inception in 2000, Gavi has helped to immunise a whole generation   over 1.2 billion children  and prevented more than 20.6 million future deaths, helping to halve child mortality in 78 lower-income countries.

Mr Mahama said "Ghana is also on track to exit GAVI funding for vaccines by 2030 and hopes to transition into a donor in the not-too-distant future.

"These domestic achievements are the foundation of my leadership of the Accra Reset Initiative."