Ghs2.6 Billion Dubious Duplication Deals Hits Ghana Health Sector- Ablakwa Reveals
Ghana’s health sector has been in the news lately for all the wrong reasons.
A few months ago, 19 renal patients lost their lives at the Korle-Bu Renal Unit because government was unable to provide just GHS4million. The dialysis crisis has still not been resolved even as private companies like the First Sky Group come to the rescue.
Doctors at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) have warned that all their dialysis machines except one and half have broken down without government intervention to replace them for several months.
KATH has been without a mammography machine to diagnose early signs of breast cancer for several years.
Prominent chiefs and opinion leaders continue to agitate about their abandoned hospital projects — most of which were almost completed by 2016.
Not too long ago, the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia government could not provide childhood vaccines leading to a national emergency. Ghana had to fall on Nigeria for a bailout albeit under deceitful circumstances.
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Numerous government hospitals are lamenting the lack of critical medical equipment needed to save lives. If MRI machines at prestigious hospitals such as 37 and Ridge have broken down for months without resources to repair or replace them, then one can imagine the situation in less endowned facilities.
Indeed, former Health Minister Kwaku Agyeman-Manu told Parliament not too long ago that Ghana has only 4 functioning MRIs in government hospitals across the entire country.
Funding for President Akufo-Addo’s flagship Agenda 111 has remained a huge challenge as he repeatedly misses his completion deadlines since the peak of COVID-19.
Doctors, nurses, midwives and other health workers continue to agitate for better working conditions. The Ghana Registered Nurses and Midwives Association (GRNMA) revealed this week that already some 6,000 nurses have left Ghana since August 2023 in search of the proverbial greener pastures.
The GRNMA President, Mrs. Perpetual Ofori-Ampofo left many Ghanaians further depressed when she revealed that many heroic nurses who put their lives at great risk on the frontlines of the covid war have still not received the package they were promised by the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia government.
Ghanaians are yet to recover from the tragedy at the Tema General Hospital NICU which occurred a few days ago when the hospital was subjected to DUMSOR. Apparently, the standby generator to protect babies on oxygen was faulty. One mother insists she lost her precious baby because of this national disgrace.
Health facilities which were hitherto exempted from ECG disconnections no longer enjoy that dispensation.
As a Member of Parliament, I have been compelled to rely on my external network to equip hospitals and establish a surgical block in my beloved constituency.
With this shambolic state of health care in Ghana, one wonders why the current Akufo-Addo/Bawumia-led government will ignore the priorities begging for urgent solutions, and rather be fixated on dubious, duplicative and deadly so-called digitalization initiatives at a heartless cost of GHS2.67billion?
To our utter shock, the National Health Insurance Authority has submitted a 2024 allocation formula to Parliament which mindlessly and unpatriotically prioritizes the following:
1. Biometric ID Cards and Authentication System — GHS405.74million (this is despite the billions we have already spent on Ghana Cards)
2. Management Information System — GHS343.92million
3. Capturing of Claims Data — GHS112million
4. Ministry of Health (Health Provider – E-Health Solution) — GHS80million
5. Claims Processing Centres and E-Claims — GHS76million
6. Archival System and Document Management— GHS38.58million
7. Telecare Services Platform — GHS30million
8. Transfer of Data from NIA GHS10million
9. E-Pharmacy — GHS11million
The NHIA’s dubious and duplicative
irrefutable breakdown of the GHS246.8million 2023 payments to Lightwave are provided below:
LIGHTWAVE 2023 PAYMENTS
Date: 29-Dec-23
Invoice Number: MOH/HQ/GS/095/23/RW
Amount: 62,364,068.07
Date: 18-April-23
Invoice Number: MOH/HQ/CEA/002/23/RW
Amount: 33,844,469.46
Date: 9-Nov-23
Invoice Number: MOH/HQ/GS/073/23/RW
Amount: 69,267,118.15
Date: 23-Aug-23
Invoice Number: NHIA/FA/MOH/SEP23/5177/TOM
Amount: 11,982,270.92
Date: 23-Jun-23
Invoice Number: NHIA/FA/MOH/JUN23/2903/DOK
Amount: 17,775,000.00
Date: 30-May-23
Invoice Number: NHIA/FA/MOH/MAY23/2901/DOK Amount: 16,450,000.00
Date: 30-Oct-23
Invoice Number: NHIA/FA/MOH/NOV23/3179/DOK
Amount: 25,000,000.00
27-Nov-23
NHIA/FA/GS/DEC23/5304/TOM
10,210,781.84
TOTAL——————–246,893,710
Additional evidence of how active the US$100million Lightwave deal is can be gleaned from the recent 29th February, 2024 letter signed by Ghana Health Service Director General, Dr. Patrick Kuma-Aboagye addressed to selected regional health directors. (See intercepted letter attached).
Very instructively, I am not the only one detecting and raising genuine concerns about the lack of value for money, duplication and wasteful expenditures with this misguided craze for digitalization. Two weeks after the Health Minister’s 2nd June, 2017 letter instructing all health facilities to open their doors to the almighty Lightwave, the Communications and Digitalization Minister in the same Akufo-Addo/Bawumia government, Hon. Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, promptly issued a strongly worded notice to all Ministries, Departments and Agencies dated 16th June, 2017 in which she condemns the canker and urged her colleagues to consult NITA before engaging in these costly digitalization procurements. (See intercepted Notice attached).
It is obvious the Communications and Digitalization Minister’s Notice was contemptuously ignored then, and continues to be ignored to this day.
The much touted digitalization drive has obviously become the new conduit for create-loot-and-share schemes.
I am most delighted that Parliament before going on recess ordered a parliamentary probe into all the alarming digitalization contracts within the health sector.
It is time for President Akufo-Addo to suspend the plethora of dubious, doubtful, duplicative, deadly, amorphous, needless and extremely wasteful GHS2.6billion digitalization shady deals in the health sector. I shall be writing to him demanding his urgent intervention in this regard.
In Part 2 of this exposé to be released on Thursday April 4, 2024, at 66 am I shall reveal how another very powerful crony company is cashing in on this lucrative digitalization looting spree in the health sector, even as the real healthcare challenges are abandoned, and the much bigger dangers for our collective security.
The digitalization looting cabal shall be defeated!
He concluded, For God and Country.
Ghana First
