Inadequate access to specialized medical care—specifically oncology treatment—remains a major obstacle for the Ghana Medical Trust Fund.
Addressing journalists at a stakeholder session in Tamale, the Fund’s Health Policy Advisor, Dr. Norbert Kipo, highlighted how patients face severe delays owing to the acute shortage of specialized facilities across the country.
Dr. Kipo noted that the scarcity of comprehensive cancer centres places an overwhelming burden on the few operational facilities. Patients requiring critical interventions like radiation therapy are often forced to endure lengthy queues, a situation he termed tragic given the time-sensitive nature of the disease.
“We realize that as a country there is some deficiency in terms of our oncology care. We have very few comprehensive cancer centers and what this means is that there is a lot of load on these few comprehensive cancer centers.
Sometimes when patients even want to do for example radiation therapy the queue can be so long that the wait time is very long and then patients who have cancer obviously do not have the luxury of time. Sometimes this can be very devastating,” Dr. Kipo said.
To bridge this healthcare deficit, the Trust Fund is actively exploring public-private partnerships (PPPs) aimed at decentralizing cancer care and eliminating treatment bottlenecks.
The initiative seeks to set up specialized units nationwide, guaranteeing that patients can receive advanced medical attention within their local areas or regional capitals.
“As a trust fund we are taking some steps to change that narrative. We are engaging with private entities to go on a public-private partnership where we can establish oncology centers across the country so that people can get the best of cancer care right where they are or at the very least at the regional capital.
We want to be able to do their chemotherapy, have radiation therapy, have the best of care, be able to do their pet CT scans right where they are and this is something that the trust fund is aggressively pursuing,” he added.
By: Rainbowradioonline.com/Ghana