Ministry To Attract Health Workers Abroad

Accra, June 4, GNA - The Ministry of Health on Wednesday launched a project, which would facilitate the return of about 150 qualified Ghanaian health professionals from the Diaspora, residing in the Netherlands, United Kingdom and Germany to take temporary placement in various health institutions.
The project would also assess the option of facilitating long-term return of health professionals to the health sector. The project dubbed: "Migration for Development in Africa (MIDA) - Ghana Health Project" would have a-four year duration from April this year to March 2012 with the objective of linking the programme with the Human Resource Policies and Strategies of the health sector which was scheduled from 2007 to 2011.
Mrs. Gladys Nortey Ashitey, Deputy Minister of Health, who launched the programme, said Ghana had in the past four years taken measures to address the trend of health workforce emigration (brain-drain) through health sector salary rationalization, establishment of the College of Physicians and Surgeons for continuous medical training and provision of incentives to health workers.
She said: "The Ghana health sector has been a victim of global health workforce migration that in the past saw a respectable number of doctors, nurses and other allied health workers leaving the shores of the country for greener pastures in Europe and America." Commenting on the project, which she renamed "Brain-Gain," Mrs Ashitey said it was welcome news to the ministry and the government of Ghana since it was addressing a fundamental need.
She noted that the Ministry's policies and plans could only be achieved through effective mobilization of its workforce and strategic interventions in the midst of the global migration of health workers. Mrs. Ashitey pledged the Ministry's continued support for the programme and commended the Netherlands government for developing such an intervention for human capital development for the health sector. Mr. Marius de Jong, First Secretary in-charge of Health and Gender at the Netherlands Embassy in Ghana, who signed a Memorandum of Understanding of behalf of the Embassy to start the project, explained that the project would also encourage a number of internships abroad by qualified health workers from Ghana.
Giving a background to the project, Mr. de Jong said the project which was being implemented in collaboration with the International Organization for Migration was a human resource capacity building initiative.
He said since 2003, IOM had conducted the health sector brain-gain initiative with the first phase consisting of an inventory research in the Netherlands as well as Ghana. So far 65 temporary returns have been undertaken by the Migrant Health Professionals while five Ghana-based health workers undertook internships abroad. 4 June 08