Doctors call for regulation of private medical practice

The Ghana Medical Association (GMA) has called on the government to reconsider and pass the Private Health Care Practice Bill, which was recently withdrawn from Parliament.

It explained that the sector is significantly populated by quacks and unless a law was passed to strictly regulate operations, as is the case in public health, "the health of Ghanaians will continue to be sacrificed on the altar of mediocrity and profiteering. It is alarming how all sorts of people with questionable qualifications are being allowed to set up and operate so called Chinese and natural health clinics in the country without any regulation," the association added.

These were contained in a communiqu? the GMA issued at Sunyani at the end of its three-day second quarter national representative board meeting. The communiqu? noted with appreciation the recent coming into operation of the Ghana Health Service Act but appealed to the government to use the open advertising system to recruit people of merit to fill positions in the service. It acknowledged the importance of the additional duty allowance to health workers and urged the government to streamline the management of the package to curtail the spate of industrial actions arising out of its implementation. And Dr Oheneba Owusu-Danso, and Honorary Secretary respectively, signed the communiqu?.

Answering questions from journalists, the President of the Association, Professor Agyeman Badu Akosa said the health situation of the country is "so bad" that one out of every three people who die at Korle Bu Teaching Hospital for instance, is between the ages of 20 and 50. He explained that this age group is the productive sector of any country's population and that Ghana is doomed if its citizens are dying in numbers due to lack of access to affordable and quality health care.

Prof. Akosa said the country's doctor-patient ratio is as low as one doctor to 66,000 in certain areas and called for concerted efforts to make doctors trained in the country to continue to stay instead of traveling abroad due to bad conditions of service. "Doctors are never civil servants and should never be treated as such as it is being done now, because their schedule is more involving than the average worker," he added.

On herbal medicine, the GMA President said that the association has never opposed its practice but is only insisting that unless taken through the due scientific process, it should not be accepted wholeheartedly. He therefore described as unfortunate the failure of the authorities to seek the input of the association in drafting the Traditional Medical Bill, which is currently before Parliament.