The Ghana Health Service (GHS) has held the 2023 Public Health Conference and Retreat in Kumasi, with a disclosure that about $14.4bn were lost as a result of the Ebola disease that ravaged West Africa from 2013 to 2016.
Professor Francis Chisaka Kasolo, World Health Organisation (WHO) Country Representative to Ghana, speaking at the conference noted that the theme was apt and aligned very well with the global agenda for building resilient health systems capable of withstanding shocks that come with health emergencies and natural disasters.The conference was under the theme: “The Role of Public Health in Strengthening Health System Resilience.”
He stated that it was important for all of them in their professional endeavours to regularly pause, reflect and re-strategise if they are to achieve their goals. He commended the Ghana Health Service for organising the conference.
He explained public health to mean the science of protecting and improving the health of people and their communities achieved by promoting healthy lifestyles, researching diseases and injury prevention, detecting, preventing and responding to diseases.
Professor Kasolo revealed that WHO has distilled the description of a functional health system as one that has the capacity to ensure access to quality and essential services that beneficiaries are demanding in routine and emergency situations.
The WHO Rep. noted that the provision of public health services contribute to the way we build and invest in our health systems,which development go hand in hand with the evolution of public health.
Prof. Chisaka reiterated that, over the past 10 years the WHO African Region alone has recorded over 100 significant and graded public health events annually, majority of which are due to infectious diseases, while the above events have had social, economic, and political ramifications, their impact on healthcare and the health of populations cannot be overemphasized.
He disclosed that from 2013- 2016 the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD), which had a profound economic, social, and health impact, occurred in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea with over 17,000 cases with the World Bank estimating that 50% of Sierra Leone’s private-sector workforce was lost, the poor became even poorer and more than $3.6 billion was lost per year, between 2014 and 2017.
He noted that the huge cost would have been channelled to other productive sectors of the economy, including health care.
The health systems in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea were severely affected due to the excess demand for services during the epidemic, while at the same time it was handicapped due to loss of many health workers and less funding for routine public health services.
The WHO Country Representative disclosed that about 80% reductions in maternal delivery, 40% national reductions in malaria admissions among children of 5 years and significant reductions in vaccination coverage were recorded.
According to him, a global survey conducted by WHO at different points in the COVID-19 pandemic documented those disruptions of essential health services which occurred in nearly all 105 respondent countries and in lower-income countries in general.
He said in most cases, only 5 to 50% of services were either provided or utilised, as all services, including essential services for communicable diseases, non-communicable diseases, mental health, reproductive, maternal, new-born, child and adolescent health and nutrition services were affected.
The WHO chief said most severely affected service delivery platforms were mobile services, often suspended by governments.
He also pointed to reports that more than half (53%) of the countries surveyed had partially or completely disrupted services for hypertension treatment; 49% for treatment for diabetes and diabetes-related complications; 42% for cancer treatment and 31% for cardiovascular emergencies.
He also reported that Rehabilitation services were also disrupted in almost two-thirds (63%) of countries, even though rehabilitation was key for recovery among COVID-19 patients.
The worse part of these disruptions is that they persisted even when the acute phase of the COVID-19 pandemic had passed with many services not yet back to their pre-pandemic levels of utilization.
Prof Kasolo noted that the disruptions led to negative institutional changes in both the way health services are provided by the system and the way they are utilised by the beneficiaries.