JICA donates equipment to Ministry of Health

The equipment was presented at a ceremony last week and will be handed over to the beneficiary health facilities. It includes 16 units of refrigerated cargo trucks, a cold and freezer room for Tamale, a generator to provide backup power to the cold and freezer room, a CT scanner machine for Ho Teaching Hospital, and six units of direct digital X-ray machines with their accessories.

Other equipment includes two water tankers, six ambulances, and 21 thermal cameras for scanning body temperatures which had already been installed at various airports and borders across the country.

Kwaku Agyeman-Manu, the Minister of Health, expressed the country's gratitude to the Government of Japan for the gesture and its continuous support to the health sector over the years.

The minister said the support would advance the country's aggressive pursuance of Universal Health Coverage to ensure that all people living in the country had timely access to high-quality essential healthcare and public health services by 2030.

According to Mochizuki Hisanobu, the Japanese Ambassador to Ghana, the Japanese Embassy signed an agreement with the Ministry of Health in January 2020 under Japan's Economic and Social Development Programme for the provision of medical equipment to support the country to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.

Hisanobu stated that some of the equipment, especially those under the Economic and Social Development Programme, had already been deployed while underlining that Japan places intensity on strengthening the partnership with Ghana in the areas of health as it believes this is one of the ways to making UHC in the country a reality.

Suzuki Momoko, the Chief Representative of JICA, said the COVID-19 pandemic and the outbreaks of monkeypox and Murburg virus diseases in the country highlighted that a well-managed vaccine system was key to the development of a resilient public health system.

JICA chief rep said a health system positioned to mitigate the threats of any infectious diseases on lives, livelihoods, and distortions in critical health services such as maternal and child health was critical.

The Japanese government, through JICA, would continue to extend critical support to revamp routine immunization to the thousands of children who missed out on essential vaccination, restore vaccination to pre-pandemic levels, and strengthen the overall Expanded Programme for Immunisation.

To that effect, the medical equipment and cold chain facilities had been donated.