The Minister of Health, Kwabena Mintah Akandoh, faces calls to address Parliament following a nationwide disruption to the country’s digital health information systems.
Minority Leader Alexander Afenyo-Markin urged the Leader of Government Business to schedule an urgent briefing, warning that the cloud hosting platform failure is severely impeding medical treatment across the nation.
Addressing the floor of the House, Mr Afenyo-Markin highlighted Ghana’s widespread transition away from paper records, noting that health facilities now rely heavily on government-backed digital platforms.
“The Leader of Government Business to schedule the Minister of Health to brief this House on what exactly the Ministry is doing because [the] shutdown is affecting health care delivery,” he said.
“We know that the health care delivery system in Ghana has moved away from the manual system and all of them are depending on this digitalized platform which was initiated by the government,” he stated.
The Effutu Member of Parliament urged parliamentary leadership to treat the matter with extreme urgency.
“Mister Speaker we need this update and please the health of our people must be prioritized. Therefore I want to encourage the Leader of Government Business to pursue this matter so that the Health Minister comes to brief us,” he added.
Responding in the House, Majority Leader James Agalga assured MPs that steps would be taken to secure an official briefing from the Ministry of Health.
Acknowledging a statement from the Ghana Health Service regarding the cloud infrastructure outage, Mr Agalga noted the gravity of the disruption.
“The Ghana Health Service and it says there’s a nationwide information shutdown of a cloud hosting platform. Mister Speaker this is quite newsy and so appropriate steps would be taken to get the minister to apprise us if indeed what the minority leader is saying is borne out of the facts,” he said.
Mr Agalga defended the government’s commitment to public healthcare and described the Health Minister as hardworking, confirming that Parliament would be formally updated once the full facts are established.
By: Rainbowradioonline.com/Ghana