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