Families are still selling homes, disposing of property, borrowing heavily and emptying their life savings to pay for specialised medical treatment, a stark reality that the Ghana Medical Trust Fund (GMTF) says must drive the country’s next phase of healthcare reform.
Administrator of the GMTF, Adjoa Obuobia Darko-Opoku, said the painful sacrifices being made by families showed that, despite progress in specialised healthcare financing, the country could not afford to become complacent.
“There are still patients waiting. There are still hospitals without critical equipment. There are still regions without sufficient specialists. There are still families selling property, borrowing money and exhausting their savings to keep loved ones alive,” she said.
Ms. Darko-Opoku was speaking at “One Year On – An Evening of Reflection,” organised by the GMTF to mark its first year of operations and engage specialist doctors, medical directors and other stakeholders on the future of specialised healthcare in Ghana.
She said the first year had demonstrated both the potential of the Fund and the enormity of the challenge ahead.
Not just about paying bills
According to her, GMTF’s first year had taught the Fund that simply paying medical bills was not enough to address the country’s specialised healthcare needs.
“If we pay for a patient’s treatment but the hospital does not have the equipment, the infrastructure or the specialist to provide that treatment, then we have not solved the problem,” she said.
She said the Fund had, therefore, adopted a broader approach built around four interconnected areas; financial support for eligible patients; medical equipment and infrastructure; specialist training and human-capacity development; and research and innovation in non-communicable diseases.
US$10m diagnostic centre
One of the major interventions is the development of a US$10 million modern diagnostic and imaging centre at the Greater Accra Regional Hospital in collaboration with KGL Group.
The centre is expected to provide advanced CT, MRI, mammography and fluoroscopy services, significantly improving the country’s diagnostic capacity.
The GMTF is also supporting the expansion of cardiology services at Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital and Tamale Teaching Hospital, as part of efforts to decentralise specialised care.
The interventions complement the restoration of the Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory at the National Cardiothoracic Centre, Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, following the fire that disrupted services at the facility.
‘Where you live should not determine whether you live’
Ms. Darko-Opoku said one of the Fund’s most important objectives was to break the concentration of specialised healthcare in Accra and Kumasi.
She said patients in the northern and other parts of the country should not have to undertake long and costly journeys to access life-saving treatment that should be available closer to home.
“A patient in Tamale should not automatically have to travel to Accra to access life-saving specialised treatment,” she said.
The GMTF boss said GMTF was committed to building a system in which geography and financial circumstances would no longer determine who gets access to specialised care.
50-patient pilot
The Fund commenced its patient-support programme with a 50-patient pilot across the country to test its referral, clinical verification, claims processing and payment systems before scaling up.
The pilot covered patients requiring cardiovascular interventions, cancer treatment and other complex specialised procedures.
Ms. Darko-Opoku said the pilot had provided important lessons that were now informing the expansion of the programme.
She also acknowledged challenges encountered with the GMTF Care digital platform, including technical adjustments and areas requiring refinement, but said the system was now operational and being strengthened.
‘Where are the specialists?’
The uneven distribution of specialist doctors remains another major concern. Ms. Darko-Opoku said Ghana must stop measuring specialist capacity merely by the number of doctors available and begin asking where those doctors were located.
“Our long-term objective is not simply to count how many specialists Ghana has. It is to ask: Where are they?”
She said GMTF would continue to work with professional colleges and training institutions to expand specialist training, particularly in areas where critical shortages exist.
The objective, she said, was to ensure that specialist expertise reached communities across the country instead of remaining concentrated in a few urban centres.
Second year to be bigger
As the Fund enters its second year, Ms. Darko-Opoku said the emphasis would shift from building systems to strengthening, expanding and deepening their impact.
GMTF will continue work on its Medicines List and Tariff Manual to promote transparency, standardisation and accountability in healthcare financing.
The Administrator also called on specialist doctors, medical directors and other health professionals to play a direct role in shaping the Fund’s future interventions.
She said their clinical expertise was essential to ensuring that GMTF investments addressed the most pressing needs of patients and health facilities.
“We cannot become comfortable,” she stressed.
The next chapter of GMTF, she said, “must be even more ambitious than the first.”
For the Fund, the ultimate goal is simple but profound: to build a healthcare system in which a Ghanaian family does not have to sell its home, borrow beyond its means or exhaust a lifetime of savings simply because a loved one needs specialised medical care.
The battle, Ms. Darko-Opoku said, is not over. The second year of GMTF must therefore be about going further, reaching more patients, strengthening more hospitals and bringing life-saving specialised care closer to every Ghanaian.
