Chairman of the Coalition of Health NGOs, Dr. Gabriel Benarkuu, says it is about time the government sets up a dedicated emergency fund for emergency response issues among others.

According to him, the lack of such an emergency fund has been the cause of many inadequacies in Ghana’s emergency response service.

Speaking on JoyNews’ PM Express, he also called for policy reforms in the country’s health care system that will not only address these inadequacies but also improve on the quality of human resource working with the service and their attitude.

He said, “This issue is just a tip of the iceberg. It is something that has called for policy reforms, it is something that has come and we must look at our reform processes of getting the human resource attitude that needs to be changed.”

His comments were in reaction to the demise of a 31 year old new mother who allegedly died because the ambulance she was being transported in did not have enough fuel for the trip.

According to Dr. Benarkuu, the incident could have been entirely avoided if the country had a dedicated emergency response fund dedicated to resourcing the emergency response service.

“It is something that has come that calls for establishing a perpetual emergency fund, and that has been a major issue within the Ghana Health Service and Ministry of Health, that we do not have a dedicated emergency fund for any of the health issues that we’ve provided, especially the emergency response issues.

“So we think that this is the time for the country to rally behind the Ministry of Health to really come out with proper reforms on our emergency health finances and policy in Ghana,” he said.