The Ministry of Health has rubbished reports that the sector Minister Kwaku Agyeman-Manu, has planned to halt Zipline drone delivery services.

It was reported in some media circles that the Minister during a meeting with management of the Ghana Health Service (GHS) on Tuesday, April 18, 2023, in the Ashanti Region, threatened to halt the services of Zipline due to its misuse by some health facilities.

But responding to this in a statement on April 20, the Health Ministry described the reports as misleading.

“The Minister bemoaned the practice where some health facilities just place orders for Zipline services not in times when the service is most needed. Due to the unpredicted nature of emerging technologies like Zipline, it will be in the Ministry’s and its agencies’ best interests to periodically review the guidelines around its operations to ensure alignment with Government policies”.

“The Ministry remains committed to the operations of Zipline in the provision of essential healthcare services and will keep exploring all available means to make this sustainable. We hereby wish to call on the public to disregard these misleading and misrepresentation headlines”.

Mr. Agyeman-Manu is also reported to have lamented over the collapse of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS).

But the Ministry in its statement explained that the Minister rather referred to the extortions by some healthcare providers which is adversely affecting the scheme.

“We wish to state unequivocally that the said headlines are misleading and a complete misrepresentation of what the Minister said on the respective subject matter. According to the Minister, “From the end-users’ point of view, it looks like the Health Insurance is not working as a result of the extortions.” This statement is not meant to insinuate that Health Insurance is not working but is an admonition to the managers of the Ghana Health Service through its providers to end this criminality by every means possible,” Health Ministry explained in its statement.