The Ministry of Health will not be able to provide the full complement of doctors needed for the running Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) in the Ashanti Region.
The Ministry has said the hospital will possibly have to make do with the about half that number in the meantime.
[contextly_sidebar id=”WTDaurS3RaXVOsOOq7S2UaRurp9iKDZ0″]The Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital suspended new emergency admissions following an acute shortage of doctors at the facility.
Approximately, 150 new doctors who completed their rotation left the hospital, compounding the situation.
However, in an interview with Citi News, the Public Relations Officer of the Health Ministry, Robert Cudjoe said the doctors must take into account Ghana’s constraints as a developing nation.
“…As a developing nation, it will be difficult for us to get all that we need because of the limited resources that we have as a nation,” Mr. Cudjoe said in his plea.
“If for example, they want a complement of 800 doctors to handle their services, but because of the limited resources, they are given more than half, they should make do with that in the interim as we work around the clock to ensure that, in subsequent years, more will be added.”
He indicated that the hospital could end up with about half the number of doctors they need “and I think that is surely a good number.”
Mr. Cudjoe reminded that, the other doctors expected to support the manpower at the hospital are also working in other facilities.
“…the question is where are we getting all these numbers from, because the remaining ones are also working in other facilities,” he argued.
The newly qualified doctors who are expected to replace them have still not received financial clearance from the Ministry of Finance to start working.
The absence of these junior doctors who form the backbone of the health care delivery system at the teaching hospital, is said to be putting a huge strain on the few senior colleagues around.
Some departments and directorates are also said to have been forced to reduce their services because they don’t have the capacity to sustain full-scale work without the junior house officers.
The hospital’s struggles are emblematic of the doctor deficit in Ghana, with one doctor attending to about 10, 450 patients, as opposed to the one doctor to 1,320 patients per the recommendations from WHO.
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By: Philip Nii Lartey/Delali Adogla-Bessa/citifmonline.com/Ghana