From my perspective as an NCD Control Programme Coordinator within the Kumasi Metropolitan Health Directorate, the most important conversation about the Ghana Medical Trust Fund (MahamaCares) is not simply that it has completed its first year

It is what its interventions are beginning to change within the NCD care landscape

For years, one of the greatest challenges in NCD control has been the gap between diagnosis and the ability to access care

A person may know they have cancer, kidney disease or cardiovascular disease, yet the cost of specialised investigations and treatment can become another barrier to survival

The Fund is beginning to intervene directly in that gap

Its support for specialised treatment, diagnostic services, medical equipment and infrastructure, alongside investments in specialist workforce development, introduces an important layer of financial protection and health-system capacity into Ghana’s response to chronic and non-communicable diseases

And that matters

But it should also provoke the next question:

How do we ensure that fewer Ghanaians eventually require catastrophic and expensive interventions?

The answer lies in connecting treatment financing more deliberately with prevention, primary healthcare, community-level screening, early detection, referral and continuity of care

A sustainable NCD response must function as one continuum:

PREVENT → SCREEN → DETECT EARLY → LINK TO CARE → TREAT → FOLLOW UP

The real opportunity, therefore, is to build a system where a person with hypertension is identified before the stroke, diabetes is controlled before kidney failure or amputation and cancer is detected before advanced disease makes treatment more complex and expensive

This is where national interventions such as the Ghana Medical Trust Fund can have even greater systems-level impact when effectively connected with metropolitan, district, facility and community NCD programmes

Because ultimately:

The future of NCD financing cannot be only about finding more money to treat advanced disease

It must also be about building a health system intelligent enough to reduce the number of people who reach advanced disease in the first place

That is the deeper opportunity before us.

Agnes Ampofo Agyei

Midwife | Public Health Professional | NCD Control Programme Coordinator

Kumasi Metropolitan Health Directorate