Dr Patrick Kuma-Aboagye, the Director-General (DG) of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), has called on stakeholders in the North East Region to create a conducive environment to attract health professionals to accept postings to the area.
The region lacks critical health staff, especially medical doctors, and stakeholders had over the years appealed for more staff to manage its health facilities.
The DG said, “You must create the necessary environment that allows me to send as many health workers as possible to this Region.
“I have already talked to the Regional Minister that we need to get the right environment for us to get all the full sections of the health service to ensure that healthcare is appropriate,” he said.
Dr Kuma-Aboagye said this at the launch of the second phase of the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) Community-based Health Planning and Services+ (CHPS+) project in Nalerigu the North East region.
He noted that without the needed manpower, the Region would struggle to take advantage of the five-year US$12million KOICA CHPS+ project.
“As a Service, we remain committed to ensure a smooth implementation of project activities and align with new initiatives such as the Network of Practices (NoP), which will strengthen the health centres and other healthcare facilities within the sub-district and improve coordination and service delivery,” the DG said.
Dr Kuma-Aboagye said as part of the NoP, the Service would identify health centres and upgrade them to model health centres that would run 24/7 so that the communities would always have access to all services.
He said that was one of the new initiatives added to the Phase II KOICA CHPS+ project, and called for collaboration from stakeholders, including Chiefs, Municipal and District Chief Executives.
When the Ghana News Agency contacted Mr Zakaria Yidana, the Regional Minister, on measures to support health staff posted to the locality, he said even though the respective Municipal and District Assemblies were willing to support this key workforce, they were hindered by lack of financial resources.
He said the Assemblies were, however, willing to support medical doctors, but lacked the financial resources.