How policies/strategies for hypertension and diabetes are made
How the process starts
The findings suggest that making policies and strategies for managing
hypertension and diabetes involve a series of activities. This starts
with the identification of a need. Health services needs for the
management of hypertension and diabetes are identified through a yearly
assessment exercise. At the end of each year, MOH officials meet with
all the ’players’ of the health sector to assess the performance of the
sector. Through this assessment exercise, the needs are identified. In
other instances, hypertension and diabetes needs are identified through
business meetings that are held between the MOH and its agencies or
development partners.
A respondent who was identified as a policy expert, used the formulation
of the NCD Policy which embodies strategies for managing diabetes and
hypertension to explain how the hypertension/diabetes needs were
identified;
Around that time you could tell that the burden of disease or the
epidemiological profile of Ghana was gradually going up with respect to
NCDs. And even the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME),
some of their projections also looked at Ghana having the NCD burden and
current projections from IHME suggest that hypertension and diabetes
burden are becoming larger and larger. So clearly, there was the need to
do something hence the policy