Inside Ghana’s healthcare regulation challenge

By Pearlvis Atsu Kuadey – Video Journalist

Every Ghanaian who visits a hospital, clinic, or diagnostic center assumes that the healthcare system has already conducted the necessary checks on the practitioners and the facilities providing their care.

It is an assumption few of us stop to question. We trust that the laboratory scientist analysing our blood sample is qualified. We believe that the person conducting an ultrasound examination has the required training. We expect that the diagnostic centre we visit meets the standards required to protect our health.

But what if that assumption is wrong?

The latest enforcement exercise by the Allied Health Professions Council has exposed more than regulatory breaches at some health facilities. It has exposed a question Ghana has not asked loudly enough: How do we know that every person entrusted with our health is qualified to do so?

The Council’s inspections led to the closure of some departments and facilities, while sanctions were imposed on practitioners found to be operating outside the law. Those actions deserve recognition. They demonstrate that regulation is being enforced.

Yet the significance of this exercise lies beyond the number of facilities closed or practitioners sanctioned. It forces us to confront a more fundamental issue, that is, whether Ghana’s healthcare regulatory system is proactive enough to prevent unsafe practice before patients are exposed to harm.

Healthcare operates on a simple reality: the professional knows far more than the patient. That imbalance of knowledge is precisely why regulation exists. Patients cannot reasonably determine whether a practitioner is licensed or whether a health facility continues to meet the standards required to provide specialised care.

The system is supposed to answer those questions long before the patient walks through the door. That is why the latest findings should concern every Ghanaian. They raise uncomfortable but necessary questions. If these violations were uncovered during a routine regulatory exercise, how many similar breaches remain undetected elsewhere?

How often are health facilities inspected after receiving their licences? Do regulators have enough inspectors, logistics, and technological support to monitor a rapidly expanding healthcare sector? And perhaps most importantly, are our regulatory institutions working together effectively enough to prevent unsafe practices instead of merely responding to them?

These are questions the Ministry of Health cannot ignore. The responsibility for protecting patients does not rest with one institution alone.

The Allied Health Professions Council regulates allied health professionals, ensuring they possess the qualifications, registration and licences required to practise. The Health Facilities Regulatory Agency (HeFRA), is responsible for licensing and inspecting health facilities to ensure they continue to meet prescribed standards. While their responsibilities may differ, their mission is to protect patients.

A health facility may possess modern equipment and attractive infrastructure, but if unqualified individuals are providing specialised services, patients remain at risk. Likewise, a qualified professional working in a poorly regulated or substandard facility cannot guarantee safe care.

Patient safety, therefore, depends not on one regulator working harder than another but on a coordinated system in which regulators share information, inspections complement each other, and enforcement is consistent.

In many developed healthcare systems, regulation is not only about taking action after problems occur. It is designed to prevent unsafe practices before they put lives at risk.

Professional licences are easily verifiable. Health facilities undergo periodic accreditation and inspections. Employers are expected to verify professional credentials before recruitment. Complaints trigger investigations, and regulators share information to identify emerging risks before they become public health crises.

In other words, prevention takes precedence over reaction. That is the lesson Ghana should embrace. The latest crackdown should not merely result in sanctions. It should trigger reforms.

The Ministry of Health should lead a comprehensive review of the country’s patient safety system. The Allied Health Professions Council and HeFRA should strengthen joint inspections and establish integrated systems for sharing regulatory information. Digital verification platforms should be made accessible.

Every licensed health facility should prominently display its operating licence. Radio, television and community information centres should educate the public on how to identify licensed facilities and where to report suspected violations. Most importantly, sanctions must extend beyond individual practitioners to facility owners who knowingly employ unqualified personnel or repeatedly disregard regulatory requirements.

These reforms are not about creating more bureaucracy. They are about preventing avoidable harm.

Every unqualified practitioner who slips through the cracks represents a failure of regulation. Every facility that continues to operate without meeting the required standards raises questions about the effectiveness of oversight. The greatest concern, however, is that patients may have been exposed to these risks long before regulators intervened. That is why prevention, not reaction, must become the defining principle of healthcare regulation in Ghana.

The latest enforcement exercise should therefore not become another headline that disappears with the next news cycle. It should become the moment Ghana shifts its attention from reacting to unsafe healthcare to preventing it. Because in healthcare, regulation is not an administrative exercise. It is the first line of defence between the patient and preventable harm.

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