The Director-General of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), Dr. Anthony Nsiah-Asare, has promised to address the understaffing situation at the Greater Accra Regional Hospital by employing more health professionals as the facility prepares to operationalise it Intensive Care Unit later in January.

He said due to the inadequate number of doctors, nurses and specialists, the Intensive Care Unit of the hospital was not fully operational.

Dr Nsiah-Asare said this during a working visit to various units of the Hospital in Accra on Friday.

He expressed gratitude to Management of the Hospital for the clean environment and also for their effort to address some general challenges facing the hospital.

Speaking on some of the challenges, he said there was a limited number of staff including nurses, specialists, pharmacists and doctors.

Dr Nsiah-Asare said since most of the health conditions were not covered by the National Health Insurance Scheme, the GHS would try to factor some cost in their annual budget to ensure the hospital was financially viable and continue giving quality care.

“Ridge Hospital has the best Intensive Care Unit (ICU) in the country with 36 beds, therefore, we should have intensive care doctors and nurses to ensure that the unit operates effectively,” he said.

“We would engage the Regional Director of the GHS to provide nurses to support the seven Intensive care nurses currently on the field.

“Since the hospital is still under a year warranty, we want to test all the machines so that any defect identified and fixed by the contractors,” he said.

Dr Nsiah-Asare assured the public that the Greater Accra Regional Hospital’s ICU would start operating fully on January 15.

“I will make use of the human resources and students nurses who pass through the hospital to enable them to use these machines before they start working”.

He assured the public that nurses would be absorbed into the system to fill the physical space available, adding that, “The public should expect the GHS to give total health care to citizens.”

The GHS, he said, would look more at clinical care, and continue prevention through vaccination, health education and Health promotion, as well as Health rehabilitation.

He also assured the public that the GHS would integrate mental health into the health system in order to reduce the stigmatization of people with mental health problems.

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Source: GNA

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The Region in the 2016 national health league table for the Ghana Health Service recorded the lowest performance on the least range of the “Performance Gauge” (PG) scale, with its performance in the period under review described as “unsatisfactory,” placing 10th on the league table.

Data by the Policy, Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation Directorate (PPMED), GHS, made available to the Ghana News Agency said the region scored a total of I46 points to earn the 10th position again in the 2017 first quarter regional feedback health league table .

The ten regions were scored on a scale of zero to ten, using 22 indicators with poor performances earning the highest scores.

The indicators include neonatal, infant, and under-five mortality, teenage pregnancy, family planning, ANC coverage, skilled delivery and data completeness.

Volta region scored ten in the infant mortality, neo-natal mortality, antenatal care coverage, and skilled delivery rates.

It also scored nine in the under-five mortality, maternal mortality, and teenage pregnancy rates.

The region, however, scored four in “HIV on ART”, five in the data timeliness, and one in the data completeness rates.

The Western, Ashanti, And Upper East Regions were ranked first, second and third best performing regions respectively.

Ms Afua Djansi, Volta Regional Public Relations Officer, GHS, said, “it is difficult to explain what is happening. It is a bit technical but the necessary steps are being taken to rectify the challenges and improve healthcare delivery in the region.”

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Source: GNA

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A statement issued in Accra by Ms Rebecca Ackwonu, the Public Relations Officer, Ghana Health Service said Dr Nsiah-Asare takes over from Dr. Ebenezer Appiah-Denkyira who had retired from active service.

It said Dr. Nsiah-Asare, prior to his current appointment, worked in the health sector spanning over 36 (thirty-six) years in senior management position and as a Surgical Specialist at the St Patrick Hospital in Offinso-Ashanti and Tamale Teaching Hospital.

He also worked at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital as a Chief Executive Officer and Consultant General Surgeon.

Between 1997 and 2001, Dr Nsiah-Asare served as a part-time lecturer in Clinical Anatomy at the University of Development Studies (UDS), School of Medical Sciences, Tamale.

Dr Nsiah-Asare holds an MB, ChB, FAChirg, FGCS, FWACS, FICS and Certificate Health Management.

He is a Member of Order of the Volta and a Fellow, Ghana Medical Association.

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Source: GNA

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The forum seeks to bring to the fore the contribution of research findings to policy decisions, and their potentials for the implementation of health interventions, and offers the much needed opportunity for researchers and potential users to interact and deliberate on generated information and also explore areas for further research work and collaboration.

Professor Irene Akua Agyapong, Specialist in Public Health at the Research and Development Division of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), said research plays an important role in influencing Evidence Informed Policy (EIP) formulation for national development.

She said notwithstanding this critical position, researchers must be able to contextualise their recommendations taking into account the political, social and historical backgrounds of the health sector.

This, she said was important as there exist complex adaptive structures and systems within the health sector, which were interconnected and could therefore not be easily isolated.

Prof Agyapong said going forward to overcome the challenges to a systematic approach to translating health research findings into actions, researchers must carefully select research topics that would inform policy and they must also understand and factor social science and political models into their thinking.

She said additionally researchers ought to revise their expectations accordingly, and factor into their projects timeliness as a matter of importance.

She urged them not to be easily discouraged over a lack of immediate uptake of their work, but to pursue awareness and use of windows of opportunity.

Multi-disciplinary research and making room for the social sciences, saying answering question of feasibility, legitimacy and social support among other things matter just as much as answering effectiveness questions, therefore there is no fixed “gold standard” of research methodology and evidence in EIP.

“We therefore need to balance our research methodology biases and preferences,” and also ensure a healthy relationship building with decision makers and implementers, as well as an understanding of their “world” and “perspectives”, she said.

Prof Agyapong said evidence could be subjective, objective or both and in their expectation of decision makers to translate health research findings into action, must be meticulous in the kinds of evidence they present them with, as they would be justified, depending upon the kind of evidence they present them with, to necessarily expect a decision based solely or predominantly on that evidence.

Dr Linda Vanotoo, the Regional Director, GHS, said research was critical to quality health outcomes, but with current resource constraints globally, it was good to do things in a targeted manner.

Dr Abraham Hodgson, Director of Research at the GHS, said the Research and Development Division was one of the 10 section under the GHS mandated to undertake research into health problems facing Ghanaians and make recommendations to inform policy decisions.

He said the Department intended to hold annual dissemination forums as a way of sharing and communicating research information, but has been resource constrained and the current programme marks the fourth in the series since it was instituted in 2003.

He said the studies to be presented cover a wide range of areas including health system strengthening, health financing, health information systems, service delivery, communicable and non-communicable diseases and disease surveillance, maternal, neonatal and child health as well as sexual and reproductive health, after, which the GHS Research Agenda would be launched.

Dr Owen Kaluwa, the WHO Country Representative, the current health situation in the African Region calls for a decision-making approach that was firmly grounded on the best available scientific evidence from all the other sectors which influence the social and environmental determinants for health.

He said WHO recognises and places a lot of importance on health research, because evidence provides the foundation for setting priorities, defining strategies and measuring results, and affirmed WHO commitment to supporting efforts in strengthening health research.

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Source: GNA

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