Ghana to host WHO Retreat

Accra, Nov. 17, GNA - Ghana would on Wednesday host a three-day World Health Organisation (WHO) Executive Board Retreat, the first to be held in Africa and outside Geneva since its establishment in 1948 to discuss health issues confronting the world.

The Director-General of WHO, Dr Jong-Wook LEE, some directors from the WHO Headquarters; six Regional Directors and Representatives of countries that constitute the 32-member Executive Board.

Dr Kwaku Afriyie, Minister of Health, announced this on Monday when briefing the media on the retreat in Accra.

Dr Afriyie, who is also the Chairman of the Executive Board, said Ghana was not chosen because he chairs the Board but because of Ghana's peculiar attention to health issues in the West Africa Sub-Region, "that technically, qualifies us to host the retreat", he said.

Topics to be discussed would include brain drain and the fight against HIV/AIDS.

The Health Minister noted that WHO had engaged all partners in dialogue on WHO Regional and Global Strategies on Health that used its comparative advantage as an international agency with a global health mandate on global strategies on health.

He said a major challenge facing Ghana's health sector was migration of health workers that had adversely affected the economy "in the sense that the funds used to train these professionals are lost as workers abandon their posts for greener pastures".

Dr Afriyie explained that the policy direction of the Ministry was to train more professionals to minimize the problem by providing them with incentives like housing and promote the private sector in all facets of Ghana's development.

Dr Melville George, WHO Representative in Ghana, said Ghana had benefited immensely from the Global fund, which was set up as a financial instrument complementary to existing programmes, to address issues like HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.

He commended the Government and the health sector for the prompt attention in addressing health issues.