ABSTRACT
The impact of health on the development of any country cannot be over emphasized. In view of this, there has been a global recognition of its importance as portrayed in the Millennium Development Goals. The Government of Ghana since independence has embarked upon a series of health policies to ensure that the health of her citizens remains paramount. The most recent health policy which is the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) seeks to bring about an improvement in the health status of women and children by improving access to affordable and quality healthcare services for all citizens. This paper seeks to question the effectiveness of the scheme in the light of challenges facing the health system in Ghana, whilst reflecting on its implications for the health status of women and children. The paper accomplishes its objective through the use of available literature on the subject matter. The findings suggest that poor infrastructural development to accredited healthcare centres, expensive premiums, gender norms which seek to perpetuate inequality against the health of women and children and inadequate healthcare resources in remote areas pose a major challenge to accessibility of healthcare in Ghana. The paper therefore recommends that good roads should be constructed to places of accredited healthcare centres, a need for a review of issues relating to categorization of all persons, damaging gender norms which seeks to perpetuate inequality against the health of women and children must be eradicated and also remote healthcare centres must be sufficiently resourced to ensure better health service delivery.
Keywords: Challenges, Access, Health Systems, Healthcare, Women, Children, NHIS.