The Healthcare Federation of Ghana (HFG), the Ghana branch of a continental body called the Africa Healthcare Federation, on Thursday, partnered with the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) to create jobs in Ghana’s health sector.
The partnership, with support from the National Entrepreneurship and Innovation Programme (NEIP), would also use Government’s YouStart initiative as the springboard to address the unemployment gap in the medical community.
YouStart is a vehicle through, which Government intends to provide funding and technical support to youth and youth-led businesses that fall within the category to assist them start, build, and grow their own businesses.
The Ghana Enterprises Agency (GEA) will provide training to 50,000 youth and deploy financial support to 5,000 selected youth who successfully undergo training up to the intermediate level.
Dr Wisdom Amegbletor, President of HFG, said NHIA had been a very powerful force and a major game changer in the evolution of healthcare in Ghana, hence the partnership.
“Today, we are here to introduce ourselves and work with the biggest customer or buyer of private healthcare services and by being a Government Agency, we want to see how to work together to serve the people of Ghana,” he said.
He said healthcare was often neglected when provisions were being made for various sectors of the economy and urged Government to include healthcare as a module on the YouStart initiative to support medical professionals to contribute to the economy.
Dr Amegletor said as part of the partnership, they would rely on the NHIA’s mapping strategy to set up healthcare facilities at underserved areas to the benefit of all.
He said hopefully, within the next two or three years, the partnership could lead to the creation of between 20,000 to 30,000 direct jobs in the health industry through the YouStart initiative.
Dr Bernard Okoe Boye, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA), said government acknowledged the need to partner with the private sector to drive the economy and that the partnership would be a great boost and widen the avenue for job creation in the country.
The CEO noted that jobs could be created not only in factories that produced food or cars but also, investments in the medical field could reap great dividends.
Mr Kofi Ofosu Nkansah, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of NEIP, said one area that had received less attention was the health sector and lauded the move to address the situation.
He said Government had taken notice of Ghana’s unemployment menace and was addressing it through initiatives such as the GhanaCares Programme, YouStart, amongst others.
The CEO said the health sector played an important role in the economy and could, therefore, not be neglected.
He called for continuous engagements to ensure that the partnership realised its purpose and called for other corporate individuals and institutions to come on board
