The Ghana Medical Trust Fund, also known as MahamaCares, will roll out its first batch of support next month, with focus on cancer treatment, including four major childhood cancers.
This is due to the rising incidence of cancers and the high cost of care.
The Administrator of the Ghana Medical Trust Fund (GMTF), Obuobia Darko-Opoku, who disclosed this in Accra said based on expert recommendations, the fund would adopt a phased implementation approach, rather than covering all chronic diseases at once.
“The subject matter experts met with our technical committee and decided that we cannot roll out all these chronic diseases at once.
Having gone around to do the needs assessment, they realised that we can onboard one disease after the other,” the GMTF administrator said, when she briefed the Vice-President, Professor Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang, who was on a working visit to the GMTF office yesterday.
The visit was for the Vice-President to receive a detailed briefing on the programme’s implementation and its alignment with broader national development priorities.
It formed part of ongoing government efforts to monitor and strengthen health sector interventions under its broader development agenda with the MahamaCares initiative.
Deployment
Ms Darko-Opoku announced that patient navigators and zonal coordinators had been trained, and would be deployed across participating facilities to guide patients through the system.
“We have settled to roll out with the cancers from next month. Not just that, we have trained patient navigators and zonal coordinators and they will be distributed across the 21 facilities,” she said.
The GMTF administrator said the Trust Fund had undertaken a comprehensive tour of the 21 health facilities as well as regional and teaching hospitals to evaluate the readiness of institutions ahead of the programme’s implementation.
Assessment findings
Ms Darko-Opoku said the findings revealed a severe shortage of essential diagnostic and treatment equipment across the country, with some hospitals simply not having the basic equipment for the treatment of persons living with non-communicable diseases (NCDs).
The country currently has only two functional radiotherapy machines, both located in Accra, leading to waiting periods of up to four months for cancer patients, the administrator pointed out.
“This means a patient from the Savannah Region must travel to Accra, secure accommodation and wait for months just to access treatment,” she added.
Ms Darko-Opoku also highlighted the limited availability of mammogram machines, adding that the entire country had only about five, making early detection of breast cancer difficult for many women.
Following the assessment, she said the fund engaged clinicians, specialists and other stakeholders in a series of technical consultations to better understand treatment protocols and cost implications.
She said the collaboration with the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) was particularly crucial in defining operational boundaries.
“We needed to clearly establish where NHIS ends and where the Ghana Medical Trust Fund begins. That process helped us determine our entry point,” Ms Darko-Opoku added.
Expansion
Ms Darko-Opoku said to expand access, the Fund would partner both public and private healthcare providers.
Six private and quasi-government facilities, namely SSNIT Hospital, Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, University of Ghana Medical Centre, 37 Military Hospital, The Bank Hospital, and Maritime
Hospital in Tema, would be incorporated into the programme due to their advanced equipment.
“So, in all, we will roll out with 30 facilities, until we are able to equip our regional and teaching hospitals, so they will be able to give the kind of diagnostics and treatment for our patients,” she said.
Pilot phase
Ms Darko-Opoku also stated that a pilot phase conducted in February — dubbed the “Month of Love”, was to provide valuable insights into the financial demands and systems of the initiative.
The pilot, she said, supported 50 patients and cost nearly GH¢4.8 million.
“And it gives you an idea of how expensive this treatment for these persons living with the non-communicable diseases would be to the fund and the government,” the administrator said.
The Administrator further highlighted ongoing investments in specialised infrastructure, including the development of advanced cardiology centres —also known as catheterisation labs — in collaboration with the Ministry of Health.
The centres are under construction at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital and the Tamale Teaching Hospital, as well as an upgrade at KBTH, designed as one-stop facilities equipped with theatres, intensive care units (ICUs), pharmacies, and diagnostic services.
“These are comprehensive centres where patients can receive complete care in one place, from diagnosis to treatment and recovery,” she explained.
Visit
The visit was for the Vice-President to receive a detailed briefing on the programme’s implementation and its alignment with broader national development priorities.
It formed part of ongoing government efforts to monitor and strengthen health sector interventions under its broader development agenda, with the MahamaCares initiative.
Commitment
The Vice-President, for her part, highlighted regional disparities in healthcare access, urging stakeholders and the media to pay more attention to underserved areas, particularly in northern Ghana.
Prof. Opoku-Agyemang called for deliberate efforts to extend healthcare interventions beyond major urban centres such as Tamale to regions such as Upper East, Upper West, and Savannah.
She stressed that the essence of MahamaCares lay in its commitment to supporting vulnerable individuals facing serious health challenges, adding that illness often came uninvited and could devastate families financially and emotionally.
“Nobody really decides to be ill, but when people find themselves in that kind of difficulty, they need support. But it gets to a point where the government must step in. And that’s exactly what MahamaCares is doing,” she said.
Prof. Opoku-Agyemang commended the leadership of the trust fund for work done so far, particularly applauding the strong representation of women in leadership roles at the secretariat.
Legal
The Minister of Health, Kwabena Mintah Akandoh, said the legal and institutional framework for the trust fund had been firmly established.
He said data from a recent survey indicated that only about 35 per cent of individuals with hypertension were aware of their condition, adding, “With free primary health care, we can prevent many conditions and detect others early before they become complicated.”
Mr Akandoh, however, said that for cases that fell outside the coverage of the NHIS, particularly complex or high-cost conditions, MahamaCares would step in as a supplementary support mechanism.
“If we are unable to detect conditions early and they progress to more complicated stages, MahamaCares will be there to support such patients,” the Minister of Health said.