Blogs tagged: Ghana

Dr. Afisah Zakariah, Director of Policy Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation at the Ministry of Health and Ghana’s former Director General, Dr. Frank Nyonator invited members of the Joint Learning Network for Universal Health Coverage (JLN) Quality track to formally kickoff a working group on health systems quality improvements in the pursuit of universal health coverage (UHC).

Over 25 senior level representatives from Ghana’s Ministry of Health, Ghana Health Services (GHS), the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA), and the NGO sector convened in Accra on January 25, 2013 to brainstorm key challenges to improving quality across all organizations including representatives.

Joint Learning Fund Update

Several countries have made use of the Joint Learning Fund (JLF) over the past few months. Specifically, the JLF has supported workshops on provider payment in Kerala and Malaysia focused on the topic of costing, as well as a study visit from the Malaysian delegation to Taiwan. Proposals are underway from colleagues in Ghana to do a study tour to India to learn about their call centers and claims management processes, as well as from colleagues in Indonesia to study the coordination of local government units in the Philippines. The JLF managers at ACCESS Health are continuing to work with JLN members to respond to applications and find additional ways the JLF can support your needs.

Universal Immunization Through Universal Health Coverage

by Jonathan D. Quick, MD, MPH

Editor's Note: This post first appeared on the Management Sciences for Health (MSH) blog. It is re-posted with permission.

A child born in Ghana today will most likely receive a full schedule of immunizations, and her chances of surviving past the age of five are far better than they were a decade ago. Today Ghana boasts a coverage rate for infant vaccination of 90 percent and hasn’t seen an infant die of measles since 2003.

Ghana has been expanding primary health care by bringing services to people’s doorsteps since the 1980s, and since the early 2000s has done so in the context of a commitment to universal health coverage.

Raising Revenue to Cover the Informal Sector

Different strategies for raising revenue to cover the informal sector

Panelists representing Ghana, Mali, Indonesia, Rwanda and the World Bank discussed the challenges of raising revenues for covering the informal sector at the JLN workshop session in Mombasa on June 7, 2011. Debated were the relative merits of different strategies for raising revenues such as general taxes, payroll taxes, special earmarked taxes, donor and community contributions.

During the June 7, 2011, JLN workshop session on raising revenue to cover the informal sector it emerged that most countries, in fact, utilize a mix of financing sources, although one source may be more dominant than the others. The financing source may also differ according to the population group(s) being targeted – thus payroll taxes tend to predominate when it concerns the formal sector, while a mix of sources is more relevant to cover the informal sector due to the many complexities of raising sufficient premium income from that sector and the large numbers who may not be able to pay premiums for themselves.

Public-Private Engagement for Better Health in Africa

New World Bank Group Report Assesses the Good, the Bad, and the Innovative

Vietnam “Deep Dive” at JLN Mombasa Workshop

A pathway to attaining universal health coverage with substantial informal sector populations

Marty Makinen is a Managing Director at Results for Development Institute (R4D), a founding partner of the Joint Learning Network (JLN) and current program administrator. On Day 2 of the JLN Mombasa workshop, Dr. Makinen facilitated a session on ways to achieve universal health coverage targeted towards JLN member countries with large informal sector populations.

At the gateway to East and Central Africa, in the historic city of Mombasa, Kenya, Dr. Tran Van Tien, of the Vietnam Ministry of Health, showed a possible pathway to attaining universal health coverage (UHC) for countries with substantial informal sector populations. During a “deep dive” session at the Joint Learning Network (JLN) workshop on expanding coverage to the formal sector, Dr. Tien presented the path that his country of Vietnam has taken and then laid out the remaining steps they have planned to attain UHC..

Joint Learning Network for Universal Health Coverage

Ghana embraces the ‘quality approach’