The National Democratic Congress (NDC) has vowed to procure the necessary equipments and reagents and training staff so that by the end of March 2021 Ghana can test at least 40,000 people of COVID-19 a day across the country.
A Programme of Action for COVID-19 captured in the Party’s 2020 Manifesto said the Coronavirus pandemic has exposed deep cracks in Ghana’s health system and emergency preparedness.
It said Health planning and financing has been poor, and discrepancies in data, including the inability to test many affected people have hindered the fight against COVID-19.
Below is NDC’s Action Plan to Fight COVID-19 in its next administration:
# The NDC will lead the country to develop a National Strategy to Combat COVID-19 (NSCC).
# Local Governments, doctors, nurses, allied health professionals, scientists, traditional healers, traditional authorities, community leaders, youth leaders, leaders of women groups, religious leaders among others from across the country will be consulted.
# The National Strategy to Combat COVID-19 will consider:
# epidemiology of the virus – the rate of spread, hot spots, strong areas of resistance due to solid community mobilisation, infection positivity rates and the rate at which the virus is reproducing itself
# The ability of the health care system to respond to the crisis including ICU occupancy rates, hospitalization rates, the extent of backlogs for tracing and testing, availability of medications
# Collaboration with key stakeholders to provide mass education and to take feedback from Ghanaians
# Modalities for closure and reopening of national borders during pandemics
# Increasing contact tracing capacity to a minimum ratio of fifteen per one hundred thousand population
# Enlistment of unposted or unemployed healthcare and public health graduates who meet minimum requirements into a contact tracing force of ten thousand across the nation;
# Decentralization by establishing regional Emergency Operations Centres as part of expansion, completion and construction of new health facilities in the regions
# Supply of the latest IT techniques to scheduling and task management to enhance the speed of information flow and timeliness of case management via quarantine or isolation
# The National Strategy will also strengthen testing capacity by:
# introducing national, regional and district testing centres together with accredited private laboratories
# Purchasing additional RT-PCR platforms for both Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research and the Kumasi Centre for Collaborative Research
# up scaling the Navrongo Health Research Centre and the Kintampo Health Research Centre to the standard and status of Noguchi and KCCR
# immediately deploying an additional testing approach (the GeneXpert approach) to regional hospitals
# improving results turnaround time at all facilities
# creating a dedicated testing channel for inpatient COVID-19 cases to maximize the speed of information flow to support protective clinical decision making.
# The next NDC Government will: revise and expand the definition of frontline workers, whilst ensuring full attention to the needs and priorities of medical personnel
# pays for insurance for all frontline staff
# reduce the load on frontline staff by creating two thousand additional isolation/treatment beds
# expand ICU capacity and personnel at UGMC to sixty beds by the end of March 2021
# creates a specific high-speed testing channel for frontline workers so they can test twice a week if necessary.
# The next NDC Government will: waive import fees, provide tax waivers and guarantee credit to manufacturers to increase the production of PPE
# waives import fees, provide tax waivers and guarantee credit to private health facilities which are importing their own PPE
# removes all taxes on wages and salaries of workers/employees in the PPE production sector for 2021.
# The next NDC Government will: a. leverage the Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) safeguards to provide COVID-19 vaccines and drugs for Ghanaians
# urgently improve Ghana’s ability to purchase equipment, PPE and inputs on global markets by championing and implementing the Partnership to Accelerate COVID-19 Testing (PACT), which is an initiative of the African Union Commission and the Africa Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) to pool continental resources for procurement.
# proposes and champions a regional PPE production and procurement strategy for ECOWAS states in order to increase market power in global markets
# Engage international allies to provide additional specialist ICU staff to complement low numbers in Ghana as we train more Ghanaians in ICU care.
Source: Mybrytfmonline/Kofi Atakora
