Brain Drain At 37 Military Hospital

...Doctors and nurses to leave
Civilian doctors, nurses and paramedics at the Ministry of Defence, stationed at the 37 Military Hospital, are considering laying down their tools to join the bandwagon of those seeking greener pastures, within and without the country, should the authorities continue to tax their extra duty allowances.

The workers at the hospital are grumbling over what they termed as unfair and discriminatory treatment being meted out to them by the military officials of the hospital.

This threat, if carried out, would have a very telling impact on health care delivery in the country, especially on patients who prefer the military establishments to those under the Ministry of Health, since they do not go on strike.

The doctors and nurses lamented that, apart from overtaxing their already meager salaries and denying them the recent 20 per cent salary increment given to nurses, doctors and other paramedics by the Ministry of Health, the authorities discriminate against them when they fall sick and report for treatment.

The workers claimed that unlike their army colleagues, when they report at the hospital for treatment, the pharmacists and dispensary personnel always ask them to pay before they are given drugs (pharmaceutical) for treatment.

“When the army people come here, they don’t ask them to pay anything; they just give them the drugs, but we, civilian workers are always asked to pay for services and claim that the money later,” they said.

The workers have therefore, threatened to resign en masse by the end of the year- if the trend does not change.

At least about 60 doctors and 200 nurses are said to be in the civilian category at the hospital, and with the Accra doctor to patient ratio standing at about 1: 20,000, it is estimated that about 120,000 lives could be endangered. It is also estimated that every nurse works on 15,000 patients, implying that if 60 Principal Nursing Officers, Senior Nursing Officers and Nursing Officers flee the hospital and the nursing service in the country, 3,000,000 at the health centres and 37 Hospital in particular.

Asked to know whether the authorities have deliberately refused to reimburse them, they said that although they eventually get reimbursed, “It takes a long time before they pay our monies to us.”

Meanwhile, the Director of the Public Relations Directorate of the Ghana Armed Forces, Colonel W. K Nibo, has debunked the claims of discrimination being leveled against the army by the civilian personnel.

In a telephone interview, he said per the conditions of the GAF, all army personalities are entitled to free medical attention and that the civilians also have their conditions of service.

He therefore could not understand the basis for the comparison of conditions for the personnel of the army of the civilians.

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