The 67th New Year School and Conference on the theme, “Promoting Universal Health for Sustainable Development in Ghana: Is the Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) the Game Changer” has been launched.
The programme is slated for Sunday, January 10, to Friday, January 15, 2016 at the main campus of the University of Ghana (UG) – Legon.
It is being organised by the UG in collaboration with the Ministry of Health, Ghana Health Service (GHS), the Ministry of Communications, and the Metropolitan, Municipal, and District Assemblies; under the auspices of Airtel Ghana Limited.
The aim of the 67th Annual New Year School and Conference is to create the platform for a dispassionate discussion on how the nation could deal with the challenges confronting the health sector through the integration of ICT.
The Annual New Year School and Conference from 2014 to 2019 intends to focus on ICTs as the vehicle for the transformation of the country’s educational, political, health, agriculture and business economic, sectors.
In 2014, the 65th Annual New Year School and Conference was on the theme: “Information and Communication Technology-Driven Education for Sustainable Human Development: Challenges and Prospects, January 5, 2014 to January 10, 2014”.
Whereas in 2015 the 66th edition was on the theme: “Improving the Performance of the Local Government System in the Era of E-Governance”.
Professor Yaw Oheneba-Sakyi, the Dean of the School of Continuing and Distance Education, College Of Education, UG, at the launch on Thursday in Accra, said there was the widespread belief that ICT had an important part to play in changing and modernizing healthcare, strengthening primary health delivery, and building foundations for addressing non-communicable diseases.
He said several policies and programmes to accelerate the growth of the economy and raise the living standards of Ghanaians had been pursued with varying successes since 1992.
These, he said, included the Ghana Vision 2020: The First Step (1996-2000); the First Medium-Term Plan (1997-2000); Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy (2003-2005); the Growth and Poverty Reduction Strategy (2006-2009); and the Ghana Shared Growth and Development Agenda (2010-2013).
He said in each of the policies and programmes were well articulated statements that informed the country’s accelerated development.
“However, recently, it has become quite clear that if Ghana is to accelerate its development efforts and become a high middle-income nation then it has to invest massively in its people,” he said.
Prof Oheneba-Sakyi said as global efforts shifted towards knowledge-based economies and knowledge societies, ICT had been identified as key to the development of skills and knowledge and it is often associated with productivity, competition, wealth, health and comfort.
He said several international efforts by institutions such as the World Bank and the UN had underscored the critical role that ICT plays in national development.
He said ICT and its application offer many opportunities for economic and human development.
The Dean said the emergence of the International Development Goals and later the Millennium Declaration and the formalization of the MDGs, and now the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) galvanized global effort at poverty reduction, improved health and education and gender equality through the use of ICT.
He recounted that in 2003, the World Summit on the Information Society held in Geneva emphasized inclusiveness or commitment to people-centredness and the need to pay attention to the needs of the marginalized and vulnerable groups of society and their empowerment through ICT.
He said these cumulative efforts by international organizations and publications on ICT led to the fusion of ICT and development through an agenda for action on Information, Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D).
“Like most African countries, Ghana has made some gains in the use of ICT in national development since 2004 when the ICT4D policy was passed into law as ‘An Integrated ICT-led Socio-economic Development Policy and Plan Development Framework for Ghana,’ he said.
Prof Oheneba-Sakyi said Ghana’s ICT sector continued to face challenges including: inadequate ICT infrastructure-base across the country; unreliable and inadequate access to telephone and low penetration of internet facilities, especially in the rural areas.
Others are poor implementation and weak institutional and regulatory framework to support ICT development; and limited deployment of ICT tools for enhancing the management and efficiency of businesses.
He said it was necessary for Ghana to redefine its philosophy on the integration of all aspects of the economy to promote growth, social cohesion and the wellbeing and empowerment of its citizens.
He said a UN Report in 2012 discovered that in 26 developing countries, a wide range of e-health applications were in use for education and awareness, remote data collection, remote monitoring, communication and training for health workers, disease and epidemic outbreak tracking and diagnostic and treatment support, among others.
“Significantly, what is really missing in the long-term solutions is the little recognition giving to ICT as the indispensable driver of transformation and the main key to providing lasting solution to some of the perennial challenges confronting the health sector.
“Granted that as a country, we will never have enough health practitioners to take care of all the millions of people who need healthcare, having technology and e-health can make a huge impact at relatively low cost,” he said.
Mr Samuel Quarshie, the Head of ICT Department of the GHS, called for the leveraging of ICT to improve the quality of healthcare delivery at both the urban and rural level.
Mr Richard Ahiagble, the Head of Corporate Communications, Airtel Ghana Ltd, presented a checque for GHȼ 200,000 to Prof Oheneba-Sakyi towards the organisation the 67th New Year School and Conference.
He called for the harnessing of ICT; for the nation’s socio-economic development.
Prof Audrey Gadzekpo, the Dean of the School of Information and Communications Studies, UG; who chaired the launch said the theme was extremely important.
She lauded mobile operators in Ghana for finding ways using their applications to improve the welfare of society.
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