Health Human Resource in Crisis

Accra, Aug. 4, GNA - Professor Agyeman Badu Akosa, Director-General of the Ghana Health Service (GHS) on Monday suggested that "a deed of covenance" be designed and placed at the high court as a form of agreement that would compel medical students who would seek for government support to work for a set period before leaving the country. This, he said, would solve the brain drain that has seriously affected the health sector, the nation's bedrock to development.

"Failure to honour the deed shall be in contempt and guarantors shall be made to face the full rigours of the law and those willing to pay for their tuition will be encouraged to do so and they shall have no obligation to work for government".

Prof. Akosa gave the suggestion when he addressed a two-day national forum on human resource capacity building for health care in Ghana - The way forward.

Participants would, for the two days find answers to questions like, "are we producing health professionals for export market, can we afford to lose our health professionals and are we matching human resource needs against health needs and training needs.

He said the acute shortage of human resource in the health sector was so severe that it was derailing all the positive gains made in the health care delivery system, hence, the need for urgent attention to save the situation.

"The nation now cannot boast of even 1,000 doctors despite the training of 120 doctors every year and this had brought the doctor to patient ratio to 1: 12,500".

Prof. Akosa noted that several district hospitals have no Ghanaian doctors and a lot of them have only one.

He said there were many senior secondary school graduates with good grades but have been denied the opportunity of studying medicine because of constraints, infrastructure, laboratory equipment and staff, "but yet the service is in a very serious human resources crisis".

He suggested that medical schools admitting aggregate six and seven and under 18 for nursing should extend admission to students with aggregates 10-16, adding, "I strongly believe that such students can also do medicine if not then, we would be wasting talents".

Dr Kweku Afriyie, Minister of Health noted that the human resource cost may account for 65 to 80 per cent of the recurrent cost in the health delivery and the proportion in Ghana for the recurrent budget used for personnel emolument was 71 per cent.

He said the future of health care delivery was being threatened if the trend of attrition was not stemmed.

He urged participants to brainstorm on the issue and come out with innovative ways of challenging the status quo.

Professor Fred Sai, President's Special Advisor on Population, Reproductive Health and HIV/AIDS issues, urged participants to go beyond the geographical, demographically circumstances and the disease patterns and think about the economic and financial circumstances and the potential of the health delivery.

He said, "though we see a rise in the diseases of ageing, lifestyles and accidents as the causes of death, the proportion of deaths due to infectious and communicable diseases remains uncontrollably high".

Prof. Sai urged the regions and districts to sponsor trainees who would agree to serve in their localities for a certain number of years, adding, "this would go a long way to solve part of the problem".

Mrs Emma Mitchel, a member of the Council of State, who presided urged the health sector to consider the involvement of the private sector in the training of some health professionals and allied personnel to solve some of the problems facing the sector now.