The Ghana Medical Association (GMA) has warned that government\u2019s attitude towards the posting of medical doctors could usher in another era of ‘brain drain’ in the country.<\/p>\n
The Association has been asking\u00a0government\u00a0to immediately employ and post over 200 hundred jobless medical doctors in the country.<\/p>\n
[contextly_sidebar id=”uEZ0f7rNaE3sgyAeKuuIY3FO9jocvoqP”]These unemployed doctors have been home for about seven months, amidst several appeals to the Ministries of Health and Finance to facilitate their employment, which have not yielded results.<\/p>\n
In a Citi News<\/strong> interview, the Deputy General Secretary of the GMA,\u00a0Dr.\u00a0Justice Yankson, cautioned government of the long-term implications of its handling of the doctors, within the context of its constitutional mandate to provide Ghanaians with quality healthcare.<\/p>\n He also bemoaned Ghana’s doctor-patient ratio which has one doctor taking care of about 10,000 patients, as against the one doctor to 1,320 patients, as recommended by the World Health Organisation.<\/p>\n \u201cThe unfortunate thing is that, there are districts in this country that don\u2019t even have doctors or sometimes, only one doctor serving a whole district. The\u00a0doctor-patient\u00a0ratio in this country is still way off the mark.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThese are people who are ready to work. The difficulty is that, if we don\u2019t take\u00a0time,\u00a0we will go back into the era where we had a lot of\u00a0brain\u00a0drain in this sector,\u201d\u00a0Dr. Yankson warned.<\/p>\n Gov’t yet to implement conditions of service<\/strong><\/p>\n The GMA is also calling on\u00a0government\u00a0to fulfill its agreement concerning their conditions of service.<\/p>\n Dr. Yankson explained that, \u201cper what we signed onto, effective January\u00a01,\u00a02016, all aspects of that document should have been operationalized. If we are talking about deadlines, we\u00a0have\u00a0gone past the agreed date\u00a0between\u00a0both parties.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat has\u00a0happened is that, some aspects have been implemented, and a year and three months down the line, some aspects have not been implemented, and these are the things that are beginning to create problems… We arrived at a common point where everybody thought that this was good enough for all of us. We are playing our part of the bargain. It is up to\u00a0government\u00a0to also play their part.\u201d<\/p>\n Health Ministry urges restraint<\/strong><\/p>\n Meanwhile, the Health Ministry has given assurances that it will consider the request by the GMA and work towards addressing their concerns.<\/p>\n The Public Relations Officer for the ministry,\u00a0Robert Cudjoe, noted that, \u201cwe have to hold a discussion on that, and see how best we can address their concerns\u2026 we only pray that they exercise some form of restraint.\u201d<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n By:\u00a0Delali\u00a0Adogla-Bessa\/citifmonline.com\/Ghana<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Ghana Medical Association (GMA) has warned that government\u2019s attitude towards the posting of medical doctors could usher in another era of ‘brain drain’ in the country. The Association has been asking\u00a0government\u00a0to immediately employ and post over 200 hundred jobless medical doctors in the country. [contextly_sidebar id=”uEZ0f7rNaE3sgyAeKuuIY3FO9jocvoqP”]These unemployed doctors have been home for about seven […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[19,10,11],"tags":[5614,5615,3,5616],"yoast_head":"\n