Mahama appeals to doctors to stay and serve Ghana

Accra, April 4, GNA - Vice President John Dramani Mahama on Saturday appealed to health workers not to abandon the motherland to its fate but join hands with government to work towards reversing the poor health indicators.

"Do not take your bags and leave, but stay and give back to your nation what it has given to you".

Vice President Mahama was addressing 680 new health professionals, including medical doctors, who graduated from the University of Ghana, Legon, on Saturday.

He said he was worried about high attrition rate of health professionals to other countries that had partly led to a poor ratio of 2.4 health workers per 10,000 persons.

He said failure to achieve this mix in the past was partly responsible for the worrying statistics of neonatal and maternal mortality rates as well as poor life expectancy of 56 years for males and 58 for females. The International Organization for Migration estimates that some 20,000 highly qualified Africa professionals migrate each year to western industrialized nations.

This rate of attrition has adversely affected the health sector in terms of quality of care and equity for many segments of society. Vice President Mahama assured health workers of government's determination to continue to work to improve their conditions of service and remuneration.

To bring about these changes, he appealed to health managers to put in place productivity measures that would make Ghana's health work force more responsive to the needs of society.

In addition, he said, government would work towards reversing the "unacceptable" situation whereby newly qualified doctors and other health professionals are not paid their emoluments several months after they have been engaged by the Ghana Health Service. Vice President Mahama directed heads of health facilities to ensure that they provide incentive packages to personnel who were willing to accept posting to underserved communities. Touching on the future of health education in the country, Vice President Mahama stressed the need to make it more practical, flexible and science based to address the problem of shortage of personnel. 04 April 09