Ghana Heart Initiative

1.7m Euros Ghana Heart Initiative project launched

By John Elliot HAGAN & Fawzeeya JAMAL-DEEN, Accra

Government and German pharmaceutical giant Bayer, have collaborated to launch a 1.7 million Euros Ghana Heart Initiative (GHI) in Accra to improve the risk assessment and management of cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) that cause over 70 per cent of all deaths in the country.

The GHI project will be implemented in partnership with the Health Ministry (MOH) and the Ghana Health Service (GHS).

On behalf of the Bayer AG and implementation supported by the    GIZ, the GHI project seeks to improve the risk assessment and management of cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) at primary, secondary and tertiary level of care offered in public health facilities in the country. 

The pilot will initially be in health facilities in the Greater Accra Region over a two year period before.

The GHI project, which commenced in November 2018, would come to a close in October 2020. Upon its successful implementation, it is expected to be rolled out to other parts of the country based on their needs assessment.

During the launch, Dr. Anthony Nsiah-Asare, the Director General of the Ghana Health Service, emphasised the importance of improving the treatment of CVDs in the country.

He stated that the Ghanaian society and most other sub-Saharan countries overlook the fact that these deaths are preventable through lifestyle modification and risk factor detection.

Highlighting the importance of collaboration and cooperation between all stakeholders involved, he further expressed his gratitude and pledged his support.

“We are grateful to Bayer for this partnership to fight CVDs. Ghana Health Service will continue to support this initiative from this pilot phase to its full implementation to the benefit of Ghana and Africa as a whole,” he said.

Director General International Services, GIZ, Dr Timo Menniken, said the Ghana Heart Initiative had been designed in an excellent way by incorporating the relevant stakeholders involving the Ghanaian national political system, the health sector, international organisations, researchers, practitioners and businesses. 

“As GIZ we see ourselves as practitioners, facilitating and managing change processes in complex environments to contribute to international cooperation and sustainable development all over the world.”

He said out of the approximately 130 countries GIZ worked in, 80 countries of them directly worked to improve health systems, that had resulted in the establishment of 6,200 health facilities and enhancing more than 50 million people who gained access to better health services.

In his keynote address, Dr. Emmanuel Odame Ankrah, MOH Director of Policy & Planning, Monitoring & Evaluation, stressed on the need to improve CVD risk assessment and management as one of the main challenges in achieving Ghana’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the health sector.

Welcoming the support provided by Bayer, he located the GHI-project in the national strategy pursuing the SDGs.

“The GHI project seeks to lay the foundation for good quality CVD care in Ghana, and it is geared towards human capacity strengthening and the provision of basic equipment at all levels of care,” he said. 

He further reiterated the importance of “strategic partnerships for proper health interventions” and called upon “all the necessary governmental agencies and stakeholders to do their best to support this project.”

According to him, the Health Ministry has “fully embraced the GHI-project“, and provides it with “full backing”.