Govt Hospitals To Close Down?

PIECES Of information available to Chronicle indicate that some government hospitals in the country are likely to close down at the end of the year as a result of the government's inability to meet the demand of health workers.

Poor motivation, inadequate opportunities to improve staff development and relatively low remuneration, among others, have caused most doctors and nurses to flee the country to seek greener pastures.

Chronicle gathered that as far as movement of professionals is concerned, doctors, nurses and other paramedical staff topped the list.

Statistics available to the paper indicate that in the 2002 government projection of maintaining 1,376 doctors, only 1,115 doctors could be kept at post while 261 doctors deserted the country.

In the case of nurses, 12,825 out of 13,031 were at post; the difference of 206 leaving for other countries. Out of 256 anaesthetist nurses, only71 were at post giving a difference of 185.

Again instead of 221 dentists only 28 were present indicating a deficit of 193. Also 264 dental technologists/assistants left whilst 1,094 laboratory technicians also joined the exodus.

These were revealed by Dr. Ken Sagoe, the acting director of Human Resource and Development (HRD), to Chronicle in response to the paper's enquiries on the number of health workers who fled the country in 2002 and measures put in place to curb the mass exodus.

According to him, between 60 and 70% of 120 medical students trained yearly leave the shores of Ghana within two years of completing the school. " We are losing all the young dynamic doctors due to poor and inadequate remuneration.

Most of these doctors leave immediately after completion of the school. The rate at which these health professionals leave the country is very alarming. We have never experienced this before. I think it is due to poor remuneration and delay of proposals to give them proper and adequate remunerations".

Dr. Sagoe added, "We are worse off because three years ago we had 1,400 doctors but today we have less than 1,000 doctors in the government hospitals. The specialists have eventually left the country. A few years ago we had 1,000 nurses at Korle-Bu, but today we have less than 700 nurses; this is unfortunate."

He noted that the reduced number nurses in the hospitals had increased the ratio of nurses to patients in the hospitals in the country.

"We need 1,500 nurses in Korle-Bu to enhance quality delivery and we are working with 50% capacity of the number".

Enumerating the major problems faced by the health sector, he said the sector lacks some basic equipment, poor replacement policy for equipment, lack of funding and requisite expertise to maintain and repair the existing equipment at regular intervals.

Revealing the reasons behind the exodus, the acting HRD attributed it to poor remuneration, inadequate accommodation, inadequate training opportunities and inability to acquire social amenities like cars, basic household equipment among others.

Dr. Sagoe intimated that countries like America, Canada, Nigeria, Cameroun, Gambia and others give better remunerations, incentives, accommodation and in-service training to health workers, which attract our doctors and nurses to migrate to those countries.

According to Dr. Sagoe, most doctors and nurses refuse to accept postings to other parts of the country as result of accommodation problems.

"What happens is that when the doctors and the nurses are posted to these regions, authorities promise to secure them accommodation but in the end they fail to fulfil their promise. The medical workers therefore vacate their posting out of frustrations and eventually embark on the mass exodus", citing the Northern, Upper West and East regions as the most unfortunate areas.

"When they go back in two weeks time the story is not different. These doctors and nurses managed to secure a private job and accumulate money and traveled outside the country", he added.

Recounting the problems facing the hospitals, he said Korle-Bu lacked doctors and nurses.

According to him the proposal for the proper remuneration and proposed training opportunities are before the government awaiting approval for over a year now.

He revealed also that a bill for local post graduate for doctors to help curb the exodus is also pending before the parliament awaiting approval.

Explaining the measures put in place further, Dr. Sagoe said " We have training opportunities for local post-graduate medical college for doctors, advanced specialist courses for nurses, clinical pharmacy courses and degree and post-graduate programmes for laboratory and other allied health professionals".

When he was pushed further to give reasons behind the delay of the proposals, he declined to give comment.