President Mahama has given the assurance that government, in the next four years, would work towards improving access, service quality, increased personnel and enhanced working conditions across the various professions in the health sector.
In furtherance of this plan, he said, government would also undertake several major infrastructural developments such as the construction of an ultra-modern, 600-bed Teaching Hospital for the University of Ghana.
He said government would also start the processes for the establishment of regional hospitals in the Eastern and Upper East regions and continue work on the regional hospital project in Wa in the Upper West Region.
The President said these when he presented his maiden state of the nation's address to Parliament, which saw the walk-out of minority members.
He said government would upgrade the Central and Volta regional hospitals into teaching hospitals to expand the scope for training medical doctors and other healthcare specialists. Work on six district hospitals at Dodowa, Abetifi, Fomena, Garu, Kumawu, and Sekondi would be commenced. The refurbishment of the Takoradi European hospital would done.
He said it would also initiate work on phase one of the Specialist Emergency Centre at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital and establish an additional 1,600 CHIPS compounds across the country by the end of 2016.
He said government would also initiate the necessary processes towards the construction of polyclinics, especially in the districts as well as regions that currently lack such health facilities and also explore new modalities of public-private-partnerships in health investment in a manner that brings new investment, expertise and technology into the health sector, providing citizens a variety of options of where they access their health services.
He said there was an ongoing review of the operations of the National Health Insurance Scheme with the goal of ensuring a more efficient, expanded and sustainable delivery.
President Mahama noted that with regards to the deficit in health personnel, his government would consolidate the gains made in the training of health care professionals through the establishment of the University of Allied and Health Sciences by transforming the Kintampo Rural Health Training Institute into a University College to support the training of Physician Assistants for our ambulance and emergency services.
The University would further train and deploy clinical psychologists and environmental health inspectors and help scale up the training of midwives and nurses as well as allied health workers, to fill the gap created by ageing health professionals.
The President in linking productivity and the secured reproductive life of the vulnerable class of society, talked also about the scourge of HIV and AIDS, with Ghana recording a current stabilized prevalence rate of 1.5 percent with over 25 percent decline in new infections among the youth.
He mentioned the fact that Ghana had made significant progress towards achieving Universal Access to HIV prevention, treatment, care and support services through the implementation of a Five-Year National HIV and AIDS Strategic Plan.
He said in the year 2011, Government committed GH¢150 million to support the implementation of the five-year strategic plan in addition to its support for prevention & treatment services.
"This year, our National Response to HIV will require GH¢180 million to continue with effective implementation of the strategic plan. This will enable the Ghana AIDS Commission to enroll over 220,000 Persons Living with HIV on the National Health Insurance Scheme Free of Charge," he said.
He also said some additional 15,000 would be initiated on Anti-Retroviral Therapy, most importantly, for the over 625,000 expectant mothers who would be tested for HIV.