Copyright ghanaguardian
Former Health Minister Dr. Bernard Okoe Boye has rejected claims that Ghana’s health data under the Lightwave Health Information Management System (LHIMS) is hosted in India, describing the assertion as “an absolute falsehood.” His comments come amid ongoing controversy over disruptions to the LHIMS platform, which the current Health Minister, Kwabena Mintah Akandoh, has attributed to a standoff with the system’s vendor. The minister earlier alleged that the vendor intentionally shut down the platform after government insisted on gaining full data ownership and administrative access before renewing its service contract. Responding to the issue, Dr. Okoe Boye expressed disappointment at what he described as “serious misrepresentations” about the location and security of Ghana’s health data. “I have listened to the minister, and I am very sad with the way he has handled this matter. The minister has made a lot of statements that are outrightly false. I would not want to suggest these were intended to malign the company, but the statements are inaccurate,” Dr. Okoe Boye said. The former minister clarified that all health records, covering more than 25 million Ghanaians are hosted on servers located within the Ministry of Health building in Accra, not abroad. He further explained that while individual hospitals manage their own local servers, the Ministry maintains a centralised server that serves as a national backup. “So that India comment is another misrepresentation and falsehood. The Ministry of Health server is the centralized hub which serves as a remote backup for all the data,” he stated. He emphasised that Ghana’s health data has always remained under the control of the Ministry of Health and is fully accessible within the country, dismissing contrary claims as misleading and inaccurate.
