Koforidua, March 24, GNA - The Eastern Regional Minister, Mr Yaw Barimah, has called on African countries to share experience and learn from each other for the good of the continent. Mr Barimah made the call when a five-man Ethiopian delegation, led by the Ethiopian Minister of Health, Dr Kebede Worku, who was visiting the region, paid a courtesy call on him at his office in Koforidua on Thursday.

The Regional director of Ghana Health Service (GHS), Dr. Ebenezer Appiah-Denkyirah and other heads of department of the service later briefed the delegation, which was in the region to study its health delivery system on the health structure and operations. Dr Appiah-Denkyirah explained that, the Community-Based Health Planning Service (CHPS) programme was initiated to provide access to health care to people living in the rural communities in the country. The Regional Health Administrator, Mr Lucio Derry, said the threshold provided under the Public Procurement Act often, limited managers of health institutions in the procurement of drugs beyond certain amounts without reference to the Regional Tender Review Board. He complained, however, that the situation sometimes affected the hospitals' acquisition of essential drugs within, which sometimes negatively affected quality of care.

Mr Derry said under such conditions, there had to be some sort of arrangements between the management of the health institutions and the Regional Tender Review Board so that critical situations could be avoided until the law was amended.

Dr Obeng Apori, Medical Director of the Koforidua Regional Hospital, advised that in the establishment of the Health Insurance Scheme, there was the need for all stakeholders including the service providers, managers of the schemes and the beneficiaries to participate in the designing of the scheme to avoid some initial problems, which could confront the scheme.

Later in an interview with the press, Dr Kebede said he and his delegation had learnt a lot about the Health Insurance Programmes of Ghana, the drugs management programme, the CHPS Programme and the National Immunization Programme, which he said, his delegation could learn a lot from for adoption in their country.

The delegation later visited the Eastern Regional Medical Stores, Adukrom Health Centre, Tetteh Quarshie Hospital and Mampong Centre for Scientific Research into Plant Medicine.