The Country Lead for Africa Access Markets at Organon South Africa, Mokgadi Mashishi, says sustainable funding is of utmost importance to ensuring that Ghana’s health sector is strengthened enough to meet the growing demands of its populace, particularly women.
She believes that, and other factors like building the capacity of the country’s healthcare professionals and improving the general health literacy of the populace, will immensely improve healthcare delivery in the country.
“We have been engaging with the Ministry, as well as multiple other partners within our network to ensure that the when we think about family planning and contraception, which is what we focus mostly on in access markets, there is addressing of those elements that I mentioned earlier, the health literacy, the health system strengthening, the capacity building and training of the healthcare professionals, as well as the supply right now. Sustainable financing has become the critical issue as well,’ she told Citi News.
Mokgadi Mashishi also argued that deploying digital and artificial intelligence tools could help revolutionise the country’s health systems.
“Part of the conversation is around developing sustainable health systems that are not too fragile and can be able to provide the healthcare that our citizens require on the continent, and also to say, what are some of the changes that need to happen? How can we use things like digital and artificial intelligence to reach more patients and transform the health systems as well?” she added.
Work in Ghana
Organon has already done extensive work in Ghana, collaborating with governmental organisations and other bodies like MIT Solve and the UNFA on providing workable solutions for the challenges in the country’s health sector.
Two years ago, the company organised a competition calling for solutions in women’s health and sexual and reproductive health.
One of the 14 solutions that won was a kayayei initiative from Ghana, which involved engaging with women who work in the markets and in other areas to understand what their issues are and use those insights to develop specific policies for them.
“Having the context of the community and the very people who are receiving care is absolutely crucial for the policy shifts, for the implementation, as well as the investments that are necessary,” Mokgadi Mashishi explained.
African success
Mokgadi Mashishi also detailed Organon’s impact across the continent, particularly to ensure sustainable domestic resource mobilisation in countries like Kenya and Tanzania, while similar engagements are also ongoing in Uganda.
“There’s a clear plan in terms of how we can support their efforts to get the community health extension workers to scale up their programmes to make sure that they can also provide family planning services effectively in the community,” she added.
“We also run a program that we call the women accelerator program, and that is meant to find those additional solutions that we are also driving at Organon. We also provided funding to start up the Coalition for Women’s Health in Africa, working closely with two other organisations, and then we have a secretariat. We launched this in 2022 to drive advocacy for women’s health, ensure that there is research that is Africa-specific. And actually, the countries we prioritised were Ghana, Kenya and South Africa, so that we can have a view of the different spheres of Africa. And we’ve recently added Nigeria to that as well.”
WHX Leaders’ Summit
Mokgadi Mashishi spoke to Citi News on the sidelines of the two-day WHX Leaders’ Summit, where she also joined the panel on Advancing Women’s Health in Africa.
Themed “Catalysing Africa’s Health Revolution through Investment, Innovation, Impact and Infrastructure”, the summit brought together 300 elite health leaders from across Africa, including ministers, investors, multinational CEOs and policymakers to deliberate on how the continent can strengthen its healthcare systems.
Delivering the Opening Address, President John Dramani Mahama highlighted the urgency of strengthening Africa’s health security frameworks while scaling innovation and regional manufacturing through partnerships.
“Governments need to combine forces with the private sector and other partners to make sure we have universal health care”, President Mahama stated.
“WHX Leaders Africa is a defining continental moment where Africa asserts its rightful place. Let’s recommit ourselves to shaping our own future. Africa cannot afford to be a bystander. Africa must be a participant in shaping our own future.”
Health Minister, Kwabena Mintah Akandoh, emphasised Ghana’s commitment to driving continental progress and charged stakeholders to embrace partnerships.
“We are not at WHX Leaders Africa to talk about the future; we are here to build it.” Minister Akandoh said. “Let this summit be remembered as the time Africa took the chance to build resilient partnerships because even the strongest national visions cannot succeed without partnerships. Partnerships in the health sector are not optional; they are indispensable. And when they are aligned with national visions, they amplify our strength.”
