201 Views Posted on 26-Mar-2011 under Health

Health Ministry Commended
Mr Albert Kan Dapaah, Chairman of the Public Account Committee (PAC), has extolled the Ministry of Health (MOH) for being the only ministry to have submitted its 2007 financial report to the Auditor General.
According to the Auditor General report apart from the MOH all other ministries failed to produce their financial reports necessary for audit investigations.
Mr Kan-Dapaah said this on Thursday when the MOH appeared before the Committee to be quizzed on the Auditor General's report about how they spent monies allocated to it.
The MOH team was headed by the Health Minister Mr Joseph Yieleh Chireh, Dr Sylvester Anemana, Acting Chief Director of MOH, and Dr Elias Kavinah Sory, Director General of the Ghana Health Service. The team also included doctors heading specific units at various hospitals across the country, hospital administrators and accountants of district and regional hospitals.
He also commended them for responding to all the queries and bringing together all the regional and district account officers, who also answered specific questions posed by members of the Committee. However, the PAC chided the MOH for lack of transparent financial administration, which caused huge losses to the state. Frauds such as embezzlement of huge sums of revenues, misappropriation of funds, alteration of figures on cheques, inefficient measures towards loan recovery, equipment lying idle, unrecovered salary advance, lack of proper record keeping and host of many weaknesses were identified.
The report indicated for instance at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital unearned salaries within the period amounted to GH¢16,137.00, at the Nkwanta District Hospital it was GH¢4,343.00, at the Ankafo Leprosarium/General Hospital, GH¢6,862.00 while cash withdrawal without appropriate vouchers at the Achiase Health Centre amounted to GH¢13,257.00.
At the MOH headquarters, ineffective measures towards loan recovery amounted to GH¢886,333.00, revenue embezzlement amounted to GH¢107,383.00 and payment vouchers not presented for audit amounted to GH A210,562.00, were identified.
At the Ridge Hospital, payment of VAT on exempted items amounted to GH¢13,846.00 while the Central Mechanical Shop Tema, was indebted to the tune of GH¢600,048.00, burglaries at the workshop cost GH¢2,393.00, theatre equipment lying idle GH¢13,000.00 and un-utilized electricity generator GH¢5,620.00.
The report was replete of many other malfeasances. Responding to retrieval of monies used to buy cars for some doctors, Dr Sylvester Anemana said retrieving the monies from these doctors became a problem because allocations were made close to their retiring age.
He said the salaries of the doctors at time were very low and that the Ministry was unable to make deductions from their salaries. He noted that some of the people involved were very old experienced doctors, who served the country faithfully and that it would be very difficult for the MOH to take action against them. He called on the PAC to guide them as how they would be able to retrieve the money from those retired doctors.
Dr Sory assured the Committee that they would ensure that these anomalies reduced to the minimum, adding that financial administration was better than what they came to meet.


Ghana chalks success in the fight against TB
The Ministry of Health and the National Tuberculosis Control Programme (NTP) have announced successes in case detection and management in the global fight against TB and allied HIV and AIDS prevalence rate in Ghana.

A major breakthrough is reduction in the treatment regime to six months without injections, a departure from the eight months of treatment of which the first two months included daily injections of streptomycin.

Fixed dose combination of tablets has taken over from TB medicines, which came previously as loose tablets making patients susceptible to swallowing several pills have been reduced since July 2007.

An innovation of assigning treatment supporters to ensure that patients complied and adhered to the TB treatment regime also addressed some of the stigma associated to the disease.

The Programme Control has made provision to support clients with some funding (enablers package) which caters for the food, transport
and other costs.

The Deputy Programme Manager of NTP, Dr Nii Nortey Hanson-Nortey
made this known in an interview with the Ghana News Agency.

He said his outfit was stepping up strategies to increase case findings in some selected health facilities in the Accra Metropolis on pilot basis, since it is believed about 60 per cent of the disease passes undetected.

He said cough registries would be opened for all clients to health facilities as well as the active screening for TB and other related symptoms, collaboration with community pharmacy and chemical outlets and mandatory screening for all people living with HIV for at least twice every year.

Dr Hanson-Nortey said in 2010, the NTP noticed 14,897 TB cases, representing a TB notification rate of 63/100,000 population showing a decline of two per cent from the 2009 data.

“A challenge to the programme and other stakeholders is late reporting of the disease. Most people do not treat cough as an emergency until they become very weak,” he said.

Dr Hanson-Nortey mentioned default or non adherence to the TB medicines as another challenge.

“This could cause the TB bacilli to develop resistance to the potent medicines for treating TB with indiscriminate abuse of antibiotics becoming a leading cause to the creation of TB drug resistance.”