A Deputy Spokesperson for the Dr Mahamudu Bawumia Campaign team, Dr Ekua Amoakoh, has challenged claims by the Minister of Health, Kwabena Mintah Akandoh, that the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) has only now incorporated treatment of Sickle Cell Disease (SCD).
Akandoh, addressing the Africa CDC High-Level Side Event on Sickle Cell Disease in New York on Thursday, September 25, 2025, announced that the inclusion of SCD care under the scheme marked a bold demonstration of health equity. He said the new policy guarantees care for every Ghanaian living with the condition, regardless of income or location, equal access to lifesaving medication.
“This demonstrates equity in action: ensuring that the poorest mother in the most remote part of our country can access the same lifesaving medication as the wealthiest in our cities,” the minister asserted, adding that the move was central to Ghana’s push for Universal Health Coverage.
In a response, a statement shared on her Facebook page on Friday, September 26, 2025, Dr Amoakoh described the minister’s remarks as misleading and an attempt to build his reputation by rebranding projects and policies inherited from the New Patriotic Party (NPP) administration.
Dr Amoakoh said the minister “started his term of office with disingenuity and it seems he wants to continue on that tangent.”
She alleged that instead of pursuing new initiatives, the minister has resorted to what she described as propaganda, using completed NPP projects to create a false impression of progress.
She cited the recent tour of completed Agenda 111 facilities as one such example.
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According to her, the minister chose to highlight unfinished sections of the project rather than acknowledge the functioning facilities.
“First, he went on a tour of the three completed Agenda 111 projects, passed by the completely set up consulting and operating rooms, and showed the mortuary that was still under construction for propaganda. Let’s ask ourselves, what facility begins operations from the mortuary?” Dr Amoakoh wrote.
Touching on Ghana’s first vaccine institute, Dr Amoakoh dismissed the minister’s claim of it being a novelty.
She argued that the institute was already a flagship NPP project, established before the party left office, and had even reached advanced stages of accreditation by the World Health Organisation (WHO).
“Then he moved to Ghana’s first vaccine institute, sheepishly trying to sell it as a novel idea when it had been set up under the NPP administration, even reaching the point of accreditation from the World Health Organization to produce vaccines before the NPP left office,” she stated.
Dr Amoakoh further accused the minister of seeking international credit for reforms within the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA), which she stressed were spearheaded by the former Vice President Bawumia.
These reforms, she explained, included digitisation of the renewal and claims processes and an expansion of NHIA coverage to critical areas that had previously burdened families.
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She pointed out two significant reforms under Dr Bawumia: the inclusion of Hydroxyurea, a drug vital for managing sickle cell disease, and coverage for four childhood cancers — Burkitt’s lymphoma, Acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, and Wilms’ tumour among them.
According to Dr Amoakoh, the NHIA, under former President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and with Dr Mahamudu Bawumia’s leadership on health financing reforms, had already expanded coverage to include Hydroxyurea, an essential medication for Sickle Cell management.
She stressed the importance of giving credit where it is due, noting that the pioneering role of Dr Bawumia and the NPP in making sickle cell medication accessible under NHIA must not be erased for political convenience.
“My best friend, a hematologist, called one day last year commending the NPP administration for bringing some relief to these children and their parents, admitting how the coverage had improved their numbers at the unit because more parents sought medical care instead of relying on arbitrary alternatives,” Dr Amoakoh revealed.
To buttress her claims, she attached a page from the NHIA’s allocation document in 2023, underscoring that the groundwork for these health interventions had been laid long before the current administration assumed office.
Dr Amoakoh further posed a question about the minister’s performance: “Is the current MOH so lost as to how to improve healthcare that he only relies on loudly rebranding policies he inherited? Where is the growth?”
GA/VPO
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