Vice President John Dramani Mahama has expressed worry about the continued brain drain of medical doctors and entreated members of the Ghana Medical Association (GMA) to assist government to address the problem.

He lamented that in spite of the many doctors and other professionals being produced each year by the universities, only a few of them stay and work in the country.

“It is worrying to know that over the past decade, the total number of doctors practicing in Ghana has not changed much in spite of the production of over 100 doctors each year and other interventions in human resource development,” he said.

Mr Mahama stated this in a speech read on his behalf by the acting Minister of Health, Dr Benjamin Kumbuor, at the opening of the 51st Annual General Meeting of the Ghana Medical Association held in Tamale at the weekend. The meeting which is the first to be held in the north was on the theme “Towards a better Health Care for Ghana the Human Resource Changes and Solutions.”

The Vice-President noted that the human resource in the health sector continue to be headache and stressed on the need for doctors to join hands with government to resolve it.

“The challenges that the country was confronted with 50 years ago in the health sector have changed in nature and essence and therefore a commitment to re-strategise to adapt changes and develop new initiatives to overcome the challenges for the coming years is more paramount now than later,” he emphasised.

Mr Mahama also urged them to ensure that plans and programmes of the sector were in tune with culture and circumstance of the country and global trends. “We must let our plans and programmes in the health sector be informed by our culture, our circumstance vis-à-vis changes in global trends. In other words think local, act global,” he said.

President of GMA, Dr Emmanuel Adom Winful, complained about shortage of doctors and nurses in the northern sector.

This, he said, was an indictment on the country and therefore called on government and other stakeholders to help correct the skewed distribution of doctors in the country.

Dr Winful also called on the district assemblies in the Northern Region to put up incentive packages to attract health professionals to their area.

The Northern Regional Minister, Stephen Sumani Nayina, hinted that plans are far advance to come out with packages that will entice health professional to work in the area.