The Minister of Health, Dr Kweku Afriyie says the government would increase its budgetary allocation to the health sector to 15 per cent by the year 2006, in line with the Abuja declaration that enjoined government to allocate that percentage of their budget to health.

He said for several years the recurrent allocation to the health sector has been around six per cent. He however said government has increased this to 12 per cent for the year, 2003. Dr Afriyie, who was speaking at the “Meet the Press” series in Accra, said in “respect of this, the government hopes to spend at least the equivalent of one billion dollars between the period of 2002 to 2006 with about 600 million dollars mobilized domestically and the remaining 400 million from external sources.

He explained that about 50 per cent of recurrent expenditure went to the district level where the majority of the people lived in deprivation. He said releases from the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) funds have been targeted towards the deprived regions. The Health Minister said this year, about 46 billion cedis has so far been allocated to the districts and 24 billion cedis had been set-aside for people under the exemption policy.

Dr Afriyie listed five broad priority areas to be tackled by the health sector in bringing health care services closer to the people. He listed the provision of adequate and equitable financing programme, the creation of appropriate institutional environment, the enhancement of the performance of health staff and upgrading of evidence-based data for policy formulation as areas for action.

Dr Afriyie said to ensure that health care is made affordable, the Health insurance scheme that is being piloted in some selected districts, would be extended nation-wide this year. He said the Bill and Legislative Instrument for the scheme were ready to be laid before Parliament.

He mentioned affordable premium contribution from the informal sector, direct contribution from employers and employees contributions from existing social security sources and the establishment of a health insurance levy on basic consumables as some of the Ministry’s options for financing the scheme, to replace the “Cash and Carry” regime.