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WHO Calls for Sustainable Funding for Medical Trust Fund
The World Health Organization (WHO) has commended the Ghana Medical Trust Fund for its progress during its first year, describing the initiative as a significant step towards reducing financial hardship for Ghanaians living with chronic and high-cost diseases.
Speaking on the first anniversary of the Ghana Medical Trust Fund, WHO Country Representative to Ghana, Dr. Fiona Braka, congratulated the government, the leadership of the Fund and the people of Ghana for what she described as significant progress since its establishment.
Dr. Braka particularly acknowledged President John Dramani Mahama for the vision behind the Fund, saying the initiative was making a difference by helping vulnerable patients access treatment without being overwhelmed by the cost of care.
She said the Fund was complementary to other government health initiatives, including the Free Primary Healthcare Initiative and the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), with the various interventions designed to provide Ghanaians with access to healthcare at different levels.
“Ultimately, the aim is to ensure that everyone accesses services regardless of where they are and what they are suffering from,” she said.
Hope for patients with chronic diseases
According to Dr. Braka, the establishment of the Fund has brought renewed hope to vulnerable citizens who previously struggled to afford treatment for chronic and high-cost conditions.
She cited cancer, diabetes, chronic kidney disease, cardiovascular diseases and stroke among conditions that could impose significant financial burdens on patients and their families.
Beyond direct patient support, she said, the Fund was also investing in the broader health system through infrastructure development, medical equipment and the training of health professionals.
“This fund is not just looking at patient support, but it's also looking at medical equipment, it's looking at the infrastructure, it's looking at the human resources or workforce capacities, and there's also the aspect of research,” Dr. Braka said.
She noted that strengthening specialist healthcare required adequately trained doctors, nurses and other health professionals capable of managing complex and chronic conditions.
Linking the healthcare system
The WHO representative also highlighted what she described as an emerging pathway linking Ghana's healthcare reforms.
Under the model, patients would receive free primary healthcare at the primary level, benefit from the NHIS at the next level, and access specialised care through the Mahama CARES initiative, including the Ghana Medical Trust Fund, where necessary.
Dr. Braka said the definition of this pathway represented an important development because patients should be able to move seamlessly between different levels of care depending on their medical needs.
She cited the cardiac centre at the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital as an example of the Fund's emerging impact, recalling WHO's participation in its launch.
“It was a moment of pride for everyone to see that we are actually seeing it coming to bear,” she said.
WHO urges sustainable funding
Looking ahead, Dr. Braka urged stakeholders to focus on establishing sustainable financing arrangements for the Fund to ensure that its gains are maintained beyond its first year.
She called for the institutionalization of funding arrangements, including protected budget lines, to provide the initiative with predictable and sustainable financing.
“The sustainable component is extremely important,” she stressed.
She also called for the expansion of the Fund's coverage to bring more patients into the financing mechanism and extend support beyond the diseases initially prioritized.
Dr. Braka said there was a need to consider additional disease conditions as the Fund expanded, while ensuring that its operations remained integrated with Ghana's wider healthcare reforms.
Ghana as a model for innovative health financing
The WHO representative expressed hope that Ghana's experience with the Fund could provide lessons for other countries seeking innovative ways to advance universal health coverage.
She said effective implementation, transparent data and evidence demonstrating the Fund's impact would be important in showing whether the financing mechanism was reaching an increasing number of people and reducing financial hardship.
“We know that we are all working towards universal health coverage, and Ghana is leading in many ways,” she said.
Dr. Braka expressed optimism that Ghana could demonstrate to the African region and the wider world how innovative financing mechanisms could help close gaps in healthcare financing and advance universal health coverage.
She reaffirmed WHO's commitment to supporting the initiative, saying the organisation had been involved from its inception and would continue working with the government to help translate its vision into tangible benefits for Ghanaians.
“As WHO, we congratulate the Government of Ghana on this one-year milestone,” Dr. Braka said, adding that the organisation remained a committed partner in efforts to make the Fund sustainable and beneficial to more citizens.
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Nkrumah Never Dies, When a Life Becomes a Continuity
By Kwesi Amoafo-Yeboah
Every human life eventually comes to an end. Yet some lives produce ideas, institutions and possibilities that continue long after the individual is gone.
This is the deeper meaning of the familiar declaration:
“Nkrumah Never Dies.”
It does not deny the physical death of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah. It declares that the value generated by his life did not disappear with him.
Nkrumah became more than a man. He became part of the accumulated intelligence of Ghana and Africa.
A life larger than its time
Nkrumah belonged to a generation confronted by a question that once appeared almost impossible:
Could an African people govern themselves and determine their own future?
His answer was not merely theoretical. He helped transform that possibility into political reality.
Ghana’s independence in 1957 was therefore more than the birth of a nation. It was evidence. It demonstrated that colonial rule was not permanent and that freedom could move from aspiration to achievement.
Once that possibility had been demonstrated, other African nations did not have to begin from the same psychological starting point. Ghana’s independence became part of their inheritance.
This is Continuity at work.
The value of an achievement is not limited to the person who achieves it. When its knowledge, courage and example survive, others begin from a different starting point.
The continuity of possibility
Before independence, freedom could be dismissed as a dream. After independence, it became a precedent.
Nkrumah helped move African self-government from the realm of imagination into the realm of demonstrated possibility. His achievement changed what others believed could be done.
That may be one of the highest forms of leadership: not merely exercising power, but expanding the horizon of possibility for those who come afterwards.
A generation can inherit roads, schools, factories and institutions. But it can also inherit confidence.
It can inherit the knowledge that difficult systems can be challenged, that inherited conditions can be changed and that Africans can imagine a future larger than the one handed to them.
Continuity does not require perfection
To honour Nkrumah through the lens of Continuity does not require us to pretend that every policy was successful or that every decision was beyond criticism.
Continuity is not the preservation of a person as an untouchable monument. It is the preservation of valuable state.
A mature nation must be able to separate enduring value from historical limitation. It must retain the courage, ambition and long-range thinking of its leaders while learning honestly from their mistakes.
To remember without examining is worship.
To examine only to condemn is waste.
The purpose of national memory is to preserve what remains valuable, understand what failed and allow future generations to begin with the benefit of both.
The unfinished African project
Nkrumah understood that Ghana’s independence could not be secure in an Africa that remained politically fragmented, economically dependent and institutionally weak.
That question remains alive.
Can African nations convert political freedom into economic capability? Can the continent build institutions that preserve knowledge across generations? Can it integrate its markets, develop its own productive capacity and turn its natural and human resources into lasting prosperity?
These are not merely questions from Nkrumah’s time. They are questions transferred to ours.
Every generation inherits an unfinished assignment. It must decide whether to continue the work, abandon it or reduce it to ceremonial remembrance.
If Nkrumah survives only in statues, slogans and annual speeches, then his memory has been preserved but his capability has not.
True Continuity requires more.
It requires us to transfer ambition into institutions, independence into productive capacity, education into innovation and African solidarity into practical cooperation.
The responsibility of remembrance
September 21 should therefore be more than a day for remembering when Nkrumah was born. It should be a day for asking what remains alive from the possibilities he opened.
What have we preserved?
What have we lost?
What have we improved?
What unfinished work are we prepared to carry forward?
A nation does not truly honour its founders by repeatedly describing what they did. It honours them by ensuring that the valuable state they created continues to generate capability.
The greatest tribute to Nkrumah is not to reproduce his era. Ghana and Africa face different conditions today and require new institutions, new technologies and new forms of leadership.
The task is not to preserve his form.
It is to preserve and advance the valuable state represented by his courage, vision, intellectual confidence and belief in Africa’s capacity to determine its own future.
Nkrumah never dies
A person truly disappears when everything valuable generated by that life is forgotten, abandoned or rendered incapable of influencing the future.
Nkrumah remains present whenever an African believes that the continent can shape its own destiny.
He remains present whenever Ghana chooses ambition over resignation.
He remains present whenever political freedom is converted into economic and intellectual capability.
He remains present whenever one generation transfers confidence, knowledge and possibility to the next.
That is why the slogan endures.
Nkrumah never dies—not because a human being can escape mortality, but because a life that enters the continuity of a people can continue working long after the person is gone.
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