Ms Hanny Sherry Ayittey, Ghana’s Minister of Health was a leading member of the 31st December Women’s Movement, whose president is Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings, wife of Jerry John Rawlings, former President of Ghana. Ms Ayittey was Projects and Programmes Officer of the organisation. After the 2008 presidential election, President John Atta Mills appointed her as Minister for Environment, Science and Technology in his government. She took over the health portfolio after the National Democratic Congress (NDC) won the 2012 elections. Ms Ayittey spoke in an exclusive interview on the sidelines of the World Health Summit in Berlin, Germany, to Musah Ibrahim Musah, Editor at AfricaNewsAnalysis on her ministry’s priorities in Ghana. Excerpts follow:
MUSAH: The WHO has earmarked the year 2020 as the target for the elimination of seven of the most devastating Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs). What are your ministry’s plans to ensure that those targets are achieved?
Hon. Sherry Ayittey: In Ghana, we have some priority; we’re looking at access to quality health care and then we’re also looking at maternal and child health care; we’re looking at providing skilled medical personnel, doctors, nurses, midwives, to support maternal and child care. Then we’re also looking at strengthening community health centres across the country which we call the chip compounds. Basically, it means that we can reach out to the vulnerable community to provide them with basic health care; and on our high agenda is also dealing with malaria, tuberculosis, HIV. So, these are some of the critical areas that the ministry is dealing with; and of course, public health. And when we talk about public health, we are talking about prevention, we’re talking about information and also we’re talking about immunization and then also dealing with epidemics our readiness to combat epidemics as it surfaces. So looking at the 17 tropical diseases, we are now doing quite a lot of advocacy. We have set up a new department called the Regenerative Health Department where we’re doing a lot of advocacy and then through our community health centres, we are encouraging communities to come and access quality health care. We have also supported the research units, and especially we are working with Noguchi Training Research Centre for us to do more research into how we can eradicate or we can reduce the prevalence of these 17 tropical diseases. These 17 tropical diseases we have also realised that they are linked with environmental issues like sanitation. So the government is in the process of setting up the National Sanitation Task Force to be able to make sure that we can provide a clean environment for communities and we have also stepped up our immunization programme. Children are immunized right from birth and also during the World Day for Immunization we go to schools to immunize children, to ensure that at least they are protected against the most six killer diseases and we have currently introduced new vaccines for measles and high yellow fever. So that’s some of the steps that we’re taking to make sure that we can reduce the prevalence of these tropical diseases. With Onchocerciasis, we are working with the WHO to step up our research into river blindness, identify the areas and then provide the proper antibiotics that can kill this virus in the blood stream.
Given the level of our development, the Ministry of Health is, perhaps, one of the most important ministries in an African country. Are you getting, given all the priority areas you’ve mentioned, are you getting the necessary support from, the government in terms of budgetary allocations and from international stakeholders?
I think if you look at the health portfolio across the continent, I mean, it’s over 35 billion dollars. Some few years ago the African Union (AU) took a decision that countries should contribute not less than 15% of their GDP towards the health sector. But if you look at the global fiscal crisis and economic crisis globally, I mean a lot of African countries cannot meet the AU requirement of 15% of your GDP. Most countries are doing just between seven to 10 per cent. So, obviously budgetary allocation resources cannot cover your total healthcare budget. We have donor support from our bilateral agencies also supporting some of our programmes, supporting maternal health and child care. We also have support from donor agencies and also countries supporting malaria treatment, malaria prevention; some provide insecticide treated nets which we distribute to communities free. And also from the Global Fund, we also have support for HIV anti-retroviral drugs; and recently, we’ve also enjoyed some support from GAVI (Global Vaccine Initiative) which is supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, they also are supporting some of our immunization programme. But obviously, you cannot, countries cannot be sitting down waiting for other countries to come, so we need to do a lot of initiative, innovation so that we can meet some of our health criteria, and now we’ve realised that prevention, as they say, prevention is better than cure, we have to try and educate the citizenry about preventive measures which would actually reduce healthcare or disease burden on our national budget.
You recently called for the training of more midwives in the country. Is Ghana on target to achieve the 185 per 100,000 live births as prescribed in the Millennium Development Goals?
Well, we are working very hard to ensure that by 2015 at least, we must be about 75% there. Yes, recently, we called for the training of more midwives because, currently, we have an aging population of midwives; and if we don’t take care within the next five years, we lose about 15% of our midwives. Most of our midwives that are currently working, at least, they have an average age of about 55 to 60 plus years, and the work of a midwife is very tedious. So, we’ve kept some of them extending their contract, they are willing to work, but then they don’t have the energy for sustainability. So now we are embarking on a massive training programme, in our training, in colleges, so that we’ll be able to support the health delivery care especially with maternal health care in our community health centres with more midwives because we want to establish about 2,000. I think currently we have 1,500. Our target is to have about 4,000 community health centres. And each community health centre will be headed by midwife. You know the midwife … is trained in such a way to… handle all antenatal and postnatal cases. So this is where we are and we think that if we follow the programme then we’ll be able to achieve by 2015, at least we should be able to achieve the MDG where maternal and child healthcare, mortality and morbidity, we can reduce.
President John Mahama recently declared zero tolerance in his administration. In the light of the current controversy in Ghana surrounding the so-called “fake condoms” in the country, do you see a problem there?
Well, I think, yes, he will still achieve his zero level tolerance towards corruption. I think it’s something that happened about two to three years ago. And the Ministry of Health, we have instituted an enquiry into the importation into the country of these fake condoms, the culprits are going to be dealt with and we’ll make sure that the policies regarding inspection and importation of, not only condoms but medicines, and any medical logistics would be strengthened.
What is the state of relationship between your ministry and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in Ghana?
The FDA is an agency under the Ministry of Health; so, the Ministry of Health supervises the activity of the FDA.
Are you satisfied with the activities of the FDA?
I think that the enquiry would come out with recommendations as to how we can strengthen the operations of the FDA; where there are weaknesses, we may have to come out with new policies to strengthen. I think that in a regulatory operation, you only look at the weaknesses in the law and then you also look at the weaknesses in the operation and then you always come out with good policies. And then, also, governance; that would improve the system. So, that’s exactly what we are doing; we hope that the report of the importation of these fake condoms would provide us with information and recommendations where, we can improve the level of policy to make sure that such occurrence doesn’t occur again.
Finally, what are your expectations from the World Health Summit?
I think that, my expectations from this conference, is that, we must be able to have a good leverage when it comes to health issues. We must work together as a team – both developing countries and the developed countries. And I think that the issue of knowledge sharing is very, very important because these days, viruses, bacteria, they don’t know whether you’re a developing country, or you’re a developed country. Looking at the various epidemics, that, we’re experiencing all over the world. So, this is the time that we need to forge together, work together, share our knowledge and then also help regional institutions with common focus to enable us fight the disease burden.