Multi-sectoral approach in health delivery vital

Saturday, February 5, 2011 (The Mirror Pg 13)

By Rebecca Kwei
The Chief Pharmacist and Director of Pharmaceutical Services, Mrs Martha Gyansa-Lutterodt, has reiterated the need for a multi-sectoral approach to help remove barriers to access to affordable medicines in the country.
She said multi-sectoral approach in the health delivery system had been proven to be effective and also made the implementation of health policies easier.
Mrs Gyansa-Lutterodt was speaking at the launch of a publication of the Medicines Transparency Alliance (MeTA) Ghana in Accra.
The publication, dubbed ‘Memorable Milestones 2008-2010’ highlights the success, challenges and lessons learned during the two-year pilot phase of the MeTA project.
MeTA is an alliance of partners working to improve access to medicines by increasing transparency and accountability in the healthcare marketplace. It was funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and piloted in Ghana, Jordan, Kyrgyzstan, Peru, the Philippines, Uganda and Zambia.
Mrs Gyansa-Lutterodt said all over the world policy development hinged on multi-sectoral approach and the lessons and successes chalked up by MeTA had shown that public, private and civil society collaboration was the way to go.
A co-chair of MeTA Ghana, Prof. David Ofori-Adjei, said the project had worked tirelessly to build a harmonious alliance of public, private and civil society stakeholders which now constituted the driving force to improve access to safe, efficacious and affordable medicines for Ghanaians.
For his part, Dr Alex Dodoo, also a co-chair of MeTA, said the two-year MeTA pilot ended in September last year and there was the need to be creative in finding ways to sustain the project, since MeTA’s cause of ensuring that all medicines in the country were of the best quality, easily available, prescribed and dispensed properly, and used rationally could not be downplayed.
Mr John Allotey, who represented the Pharmaceutical Society of Ghana, said the project enabled members to hold discussions with policy makers and policy implementors which helped in the formulation of policies that impacted positively on the lives of Ghanaians.
He said it was important that MeTA became an entrenched institution in the country to ensure transparency and accountability in the medicine supply chain.
A member of the MeTA Governing Council who represented Civil Society Organisations (CSO), Mr Charles Allotey, said the MeTA project had helped build the capacity of CSOs to engage and discuss issues relating to medicine distribution and pricing.
He said the project had trained more than 100 CSOs and a network of CSOs had also been established across the 10 regions of Ghana to work in medicines transparency issues.
A director at the Ministry of Health, Mr Sam Boateng, who launched the publication, said MeTA had deepened the multi-sectoral approach and also empowered consumers to have a voice in issues relating to medicines.