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Medical School is ‘starving’
Accra (30 April 2002) -- The University of Ghana Medical School (UGMS) will be compelled to start charging fees if the current level of government funding remains the same.
The Dean of the UGMS, Professor Clifford Nii Boye Tagoe, announced this at the launch of the 40th anniversary celebration of the school in Accra, on Friday. Prof Tagoe said that the perennial problem of inadequate funding was making it difficult for the school to expand and also provide some basic research and teaching equipment. Fee charging, he said, offered the only way out if government funding did not increase.
Speaking further about the problems, he said that the UGMS was still grappling with the issue of academic staff shortage and ageing staff. The Dean explained that the average age of lecturers in the school was over 50 years, while all the departments were operating with less than 60 per cent of the required staff.
He drew particular attention to the plight of the basic sciences departments, which were being stifled by “the glamour of clinical medicine.” He said that no new doctors had been recruited into those departments for further training since the early eighties, adding that doctors were more easily attracted to the clinical departments where the prospects of better remuneration were much brighter.
Prof Tagoe appealed to the Ministries of Health and Education to institute measures, as was done at the inception of the Medical School, to make it attractive for doctors to specialise in the basic sciences and to staff the school.
The Provost of the College of Health Sciences, Rev Prof Andrew S. Ayittey, urged corporate bodies and organisations to help sponsor graduates of the school who were interested in post-graduate courses. He urged students of the school to show patriotism after completion by staying in the country to practice. “That is a challenge of nation-building you must take up,” he said.
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