In a bid to strengthen the country’s preparedness, coordination and response to public health emergencies, the Ghana Health Service (GHS) has outdoored five strategic documents and a national roadmap.
They include; the National Public Health Emergency Operations Centre (PHEOC) Strategic Plan 2026–2030, National PHEOC Handbook 2026, National PHEOC Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) Volume One, National Public Health Workforce Surge Strategy Plan 2026, and National Public Health Workforce Surge Management SOPs Volume Two.
Launching the documents in Accra on Friday, the Director-General of the GHS, Dr Samuel Kaba Akoriyea, said the PHEOC would not replace the statutory mandates of other institutions but would provide a platform for coordinated public health emergency action.
He said the launch marked the beginning of implementation, urging stakeholders to move “from documents to action, from structures to functionality, and from preparedness on paper to readiness in practice.”
The Deputy Director of Public Health, Dr Kwame Amponsa-Achiano, noted that public health emergency preparedness and response could not be the responsibility of the health sector alone.
He said emergencies such as disease outbreaks, floods, chemical or radiological incidents and emergencies at port of entry required strong multi-sectorial coordination, timely information sharing, clear accountability and collective action.
Dr Amponsa-Achiano indicated that the documents were the product of a collective national effort involving the Ministry of Health, GHS, and other stakeholders from the health and non-health sectors.
The Head of the National Public Health Emergency Operations Centre, Dr Lawrence Lartey, explained that the priority was now to make the system functional and establish a common national approach to public health emergency management.
He said the documents provided a framework for governance, operations, workforce and sustainability, connecting the national level through the regions and districts in a multi-sectoral manner.
Dr Lartey outlined the five-year strategy focused on seven key areas, including governance and institutionalisation, ICT and public health intelligence, logistics and infrastructure, emergency operations and incident management, workforce capacity, sustainability and multi-sectoral coordination, as well as policies, plans and SOPs.
He said the estimated cost of the strategy was GH¢35.4 million.
The Country Director of the US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Ghana, Dr Danielle Barradas, said the documents reflected lessons Ghana had learnt from public health emergencies including COVID-19, Marburg and other outbreaks.
She said the documents would help Ghana move from relying on individual experience and institutional memory towards systems that were documented, tested, improved and sustained.
A representative of the African Field Epidemiology Network (AFENET), Dr Joseph Asamoah Frimpong, said the launch marked the culmination of more than a decade of work, consultation and partnership to strengthen Ghana’s emergency management system.
He cautioned that the success of the documents would depend on their implementation, saying, that, “a document on a shelf cannot coordinate an emergency. A handbook cannot activate itself. An SOP cannot make a decision.”
BY RASHEEDA AFOAKWAH & JESSIE PRINCESS DUAH
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