T he demand for healthcare services in Ghana is expected to grow exponentially; however, the country’s public expenditure on health has remained at a low level of around 1 percent of GDP over the last two decades. The deficient level of public spending on health has resulted in poor infrastructure and inadequate human resources in this crucial sector. This has adversely affected both the coverage and quality of healthcare services available in the country, especially to the large proportion of economically weaker sections of the population.
Nearly 70 percent of healthcare services in Ghana are being provided by the private sector; this, along with lack of access to generic medicines, is believed to have increased the out of pocket expenditure by people on healthcare.
With regard to the latter, we are trying to identify and highlight measures for curtailing the generation of ‘black money’ and its outflow from the country, and, facilitating efforts towards enhancing the capacity of think tanks and civil society organisations in other African countries for generating nationally relevant evidence on illicit financial flows. As regards international taxation issues, ACT Africa’s research and dissemination focuses both on the process of formulation of global norms and standards and their suitability for developing and low income countries.
The lack of availability.
Nearly 70 percent of healthcare services in Ghana are being provided by the private sector; this, along with lack of access to generic medicines, is believed to have increased the out of pocket expenditure by people on healthcare.
Given the widely acknowledged need for stepping up the country’s public expenditure on health, Act Africa’s research pays special attention to the budgetary priorities for the sector at the national level. There is a strong emphasis on generating evidence around three core issues in the health sector – the adequacy of overall public spending on the sector, access to free generic medicines in government healthcare facilities, and availability of human resources for public provisioning of healthcare.
However, there is also a need for better utilisation of the available budgetary resources in the sector since poor financial management and a top-down approach in planning and implementation of programmes have posed major challenges. Accordingly, we also examine the patterns of fund utilisation in some of the important government programmes for health sector like, the National Health Insurance Scheme.