President Mahama unveils homegrown healthcare funding - GH¢3 billion unlocked from uncapped NHIS
President John Dramani Mahama has stated that Ghana is looking inwards to fund its healthcare needs, and announced a series of domestic measures that will move the country away from donor dependency.
He urged member states, especially those in Africa and other parts of the developing world, to move decisively from a culture of donor dependency to one of health sovereignty.
President Mahama was delivering the keynote address yesterday at the 79th World Health Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland.
He revealed that uncapping the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) fund had freed up an additional GH¢3 billion ($300 million) for healthcare investment.
The President added that the NHIS had been streamlined to eliminate bottlenecks, with the deployment of digital tools, including artificial intelligence, to detect fraudulent claims and prioritise prompt refunds to service providers.
“A health insurance scheme is only as strong as the trust between the state and the hospitals that provide the care,” President Mahama told the assembly of health ministers, delegates and World Health Organisation (WHO) officials.
“By ensuring our providers are paid on time, we ensure our citizens are treated with dignity,” he added.
MahamaCares
The President also told the assembly about how the Ghana Medical Trust Fund (MahamaCares), established to tackle non-communicable diseases (NCDs), was now operational for citizens suffering from cardiovascular conditions, cancers, liver disease and renal failures.
“MahamaCares is ensuring that specialised, high-cost care is not a privilege for just a few, but a right for all,” he said.
President Mahama announced that Ghana was on track to exit the Global Vaccine Alliance( GAVI) funding for vaccines by 2030, and expressed the hope that the country would rather transition to become a donor nation in the not-too-distant future.
He stated that his government had successfully begun implementing the Free Primary Health Care Programme, which removed financial barriers to basic and essential services at the rural level, a feat he said the WHO, led by its Director-General, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, was among the first to congratulate Ghana for.
Aid cuts context
President Mahama acknowledged that Ghana lost $78 million following the closure of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) programmes, funds that had supported malaria control, maternal and child health, nutrition and HIV/AIDS treatment.
He also noted that global humanitarian assistance for health had declined by 40 per cent.
The President referred to the data to underscore his central message: “The old donor-dependent system is over”.
“We are witnessing the end of an era, and we must have the courage to build the next one,” President Mahama stated.
He cited the Accra Reset, the African Health Sovereignty Conference convened in Ghana in August, 2025, as the continental response to the crisis.
Toothless reform
The President expressed concern that a draft resolution before the assembly sought to protect existing “organisational mandates” and prohibit the recommendation of mergers or consolidations.
“If we launch a reform process that is prohibited from recommencing actual reform, we are merely performing a ritual,” he said.
He added that: “We cannot prioritise institutional comfort over human survival.”
President Mahama made three appeals to the assembly: that reform must not become a ceiling; that the world must invest in execution, “deal rooms, local factories and resilient supply chains”; and that success must be measured by whether “a child in the Global South has a reasonable chance of survival as a child in the Global North.”
