Professor Agyemang Badu Akosa has bemoaned the Health Ministry’s lack of involvement and failure of successive governments in the training of doctors and other health professionals.
Currently, there are 79 districts hospitals with no doctors, and 82 districts without a hospital in the country. Out of the 7,724 hospitals in the country, over 5000 are managed by the Ghana Health Service.
[contextly_sidebar id=”cL0t88BqeAwmNJaJH4NEusqxK6bAGCSH”]Speaking to Citi News, Professor Agyeman Badu Akosa tasked the Ministry of Health to ensure a review of the number of students who apply to medical institutions to solve the deficiency in the doctor-patient ratio.
His comment comes at a time when the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital in the Ashanti Region has suspended new emergency shortage of doctors at the facility.
“There should be a dialogue between the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Education, Chief Director, Director General and the Deans of Medical Schools and together we should set standards because if as a lower middle-income country we are supposed to have a doctor to 5000 patients, how do we achieve that in the shortest possible time and for me that is the crux of the matter.”
Professor Agyeman Badu Akosa expressed worry about how successive governments have failed in dealing with lapses in our health delivery systems, noting that, “there is no place you can expect a doctor to attend to 200 patients one morning and expect him to do a good job.”
“One of the tragedies of our health care delivery system is that, as a country, we have not been bold enough to look at our population and the number of various health care categories we need, there is no doubt that our health facilities and delivery systems are woefully inadequate.
“As a country, by World Health Organization standards, 1 doctor is to 5000 patients. Why are we still wallowing around 1 doctor to 10,000 patients.”
“We have University of Ghana medical School SMS in Kumasi, UDS Tamale and Cape Coast Medical School, so by now we should have a considerable number of doctors in the country.
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By: Neil Amartey Kanarku/citifmonline.com/Ghana