The Director-General of the World Health Organisation (WHO), Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has pledged the organisation’s continued support for Ghana to achieve substantial growth in the health sector.
He said this when the Minister of Health, Kwaku Agyeman Manu, paid him a courtesy call in his Geneva office.
Dr Ghebreyesus praised Ghana for fighting COVID-19 and other excellent achievements in the health sector, all of which can be ascribed to solid administration and leadership.
He also urged the Minister and the government to be steadfast in their efforts to strengthen the health sector and turn it into a hub for high-quality healthcare delivery, and he guaranteed WHO’s continued support to Ghana in this endeavour.
Mr Agyeman Manu, for his part, congratulated the DG on his re-election on behalf of the President of the Republic of Ghana and assured him of Ghana’s continued support in his upcoming term of office.
He expressed gratitude for the significant support Ghana got during the peak of the COVID-19 Pandemic, as well as other support programmes, from WHO during the Director General’s first term in office.
The implementation of the NORAD Initiative on Noncommunicable Diseases, and the first Strategic Dialogue on NCDs hosted in Ghana alongside Norway and Germany were just a few of the benefits derived from WHO under Dr Ghebreyesus’ leadership.
The sector minister took advantage of the opportunity to appeal to the Director-General to help Ghana prepare to curb a probable outbreak of monkeypox.
Budgetary support for the relocation of the UN hospital at Burma Camp to a more accessible location, as well as the supply of basic testing tools to enable health workers to examine basic vital statistics such as blood pressure and sugar levels, were among the requests made to the Director-General.
He also requested that Ghana be considered for inclusion in the St. Jude Initiative on childhood cancers, as well as an expanded cancer programme in Ghana.