The Ghana Medical Care Trust Fund, also known as ‘Mahama Cares,’ will not replace the free dialysis treatment on the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), Health Minister Kwabena Mintah Akandoh has assured.
Rather, the initiative aims to generate a clear roadmap to ensure sustainable funding for the continued running of the project, irrespective of the government in power.
Mr. Akandoh gave the assurance following the inauguration of a nine-member Technical Taskforce for the Mahama Cares initiative on Wednesday.
The Mahama Cares initiative seeks to provide financial support to individuals suffering from chronic health conditions, including kidney and liver diseases, cancers, and cardiac ailments.
The technical taskforce is mandated to develop a robust policy and legal framework to establish Mahama Cares as a statutory entity and design a suitable funding model to ensure the fund’s long-term viability. It will also establish clear and transparent eligibility and disbursement criteria to guarantee fairness and efficiency, as well as evaluate healthcare infrastructure and suggest improvements to ensure accessibility.
“The task force has about five weeks to complete whatever they have been mandated to do. Mortalities with respect to chronic diseases are very high, and before you will be able to operationalize such a fund, you need to go through a lot of processes,” Mr. Akandoh said.
“The blueprint, the legal framework, the sources of funding, among others, make it imperative to get the task force in place to come up with the roadmap for operationalization.”
“They will be at the center of affairs to coordinate and give everybody willing to provide input into the initiative so that we can consolidate everything into a workable document.”
The Minister emphasized that the initiative does not replace the existing free dialysis treatment on NHIS but aims to complement healthcare funding. He recalled his tenure as the ranking member of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Health, where provisions were suggested for dialysis, leading to an allocation of GHC 2 million, with an additional GHC 2 million sourced from corporate social responsibility, totaling GHC 4 million.
“I can tell you that GHC 4 million cannot take care of all dialysis across the country. So, there is a need for sustainable and reliable sources of funding,” he stated.
To ensure sustainability, he noted that the government was putting up a legal framework, including the possibility of going to Parliament to establish Mahama Cares as a statutory entity to secure defined sources of funding, preventing abandonment regardless of which party is in power.
Meanwhile, Mr. Kojo Baffour Ahenkorah, President of the Renal Patients Association, assured in a media interview that dialysis treatment remains free and that patients with NHIS cards can continue to access the service.
“Currently, the mortality rate among kidney patients has reduced drastically due to the free dialysis treatment on NHIS instituted by the previous administration,” he said, warning that any attempt to discontinue it would put their lives at risk.
He also noted that most renal patients are between 18 and 40 years old and unemployed, making it necessary for the current government to engage stakeholders to determine the best path forward if the previous administration did not fully implement the policy correctly.
Mr. Ahenkorah acknowledged the inauguration of the technical task force as laudable but expressed concern that renal patients were not included in the process as beneficiaries of the Mahama Cares programme.
He, therefore, appealed to the government to involve them in decision-making, as their survival depends on the continuation of the free dialysis treatment currently available.