President J.A. Kufuor has announced that henceforth all pregnant women who attend government hospitals will receive free antenatal care.

To this end, therefore, he has instructed the Ministry of Health and the Ghana Health Service to liaise together in getting the modalities in place for the smooth implementation of the policy as soon as possible.

The announcement was made at a meeting President Kufuor held with the UK Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, in London last Wednesday. President Kufuor was in the UK for a conference on Public/Private sector cooperation for the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals, (MDGs), dubbed “Business Call to Action”.

As a consequence of this decision, the British Government has pledged to support the Ghanaian Health sector with an amount of £42.5 million, out of which $6 million will be set aside annually for the implementation of the policy.

The “Business Call to Action” conference was an initiative of the British Government, intended to elicit the support of the Private Sector to achieve the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.

Ghanaand Rwanda, considered to be the best performers on the African continent so far, shared their experiences at the conference.

President Kufuor has since returned home.