President John Dramani Mahama has officially opened the 28th Annual International Conference of the Association of Medical Councils of Africa (AMCOA) in Accra, issuing a passionate call for responsive regulation to secure public trust and achieve Universal Health Coverage (UHC) across the continent.
Addressing delegates at the opening ceremony on August 24, 2026, President Mahama emphasized that UHC cannot rely solely on infrastructure, expanded insurance, or workforce numbers, but must be anchored on patient safety, ethics, and accountability.
“A health system cannot be truly universal if the care people receive is unsafe,” President Mahama declared. “Every licence issued by a regulator is a promise made to the public. It is a promise that the person entrusted with the life of a patient has been properly trained, properly assessed, properly registered, and will be held accountable to professional and ethical standards.”
The President noted that rapid changes across Africa—including shifting disease burdens, digital health transformations, artificial intelligence, and health workforce migration—demand regulatory frameworks that are firm, fair, locally grounded, and globally informed.
“In such a world, regulation cannot be static. Regulation must be responsive,” he stressed, warning that technological advancements and emergency settings must never compromise public safety or serve as an excuse for abandoning standards.
President Mahama outlined key health policy achievements in Ghana, including the implementation of the Free Primary Healthcare Policy, the uncapping of the National Health Insurance Fund, and the establishment of the Ghana Medical Trust Fund (MahamaCares) to support patients facing catastrophic costs from chronic conditions.
Highlighting the nation’s commitment to medical regulation, the President directed the immediate release of additional funding to complete Phase II of the Medical and Dental Council of Ghana’s new Head Office Complex.
The facility will house a state-of-the-art clinical skills examination centre for competency assessments and national licensing examinations.
“Financing and infrastructure alone will not deliver the healthcare transformation we seek. We must also invest in governance. We must invest in standards. We must invest in ethics. We must invest in trust,” President Mahama stated.
He urged the conference delegates to prioritize seven key areas during their deliberations: strengthening regulatory harmonisation, investing in regulatory science, building secure data exchange systems to curb credential fraud, protecting medical education integrity, developing emergency regulatory frameworks, governing digital health and AI, and placing the patient at the centre of regulation.
The event, hosted by the Medical and Dental Council of Ghana under the auspices of the Ministry of Health, brings together health ministers, regulatory heads, medical academics, and international partners from across Africa and the globe to deliberate on the theme, “Responsive Regulation for Safer Communities towards Universal Health Coverage.”
By: Rainbowradioonline.com/Ghana
