<<Print>>

Director General of the Ghana Health Service, Dr. Anthony Nsiah Asare says the issue of inadequate and inequities in the distribution of health professionals especially doctors across the country continues to be a major challenge for the health sector.

He says records at the Ghana Health Service shows that 42% of all doctors in the country are based in Accra whilst the rest of the country contend with the remainig 58%.

"Our statistics at the Ghana Health Service indicates about 105,440 health workers as against 61,756 that is at post, leaving 41% vacancy rate which is greatest among specialist health professionals," he noted.

This he says is adversely affecting Health Service delivery in the country.

He said despite these challenges Ghana has achieved significant results in the various areas of service delivery.

Dr Nsiah Asare was speaking at the first session of the 51st congregation and 6th graduation ceremony of the College of Health and Allied Sciences of the School of Medical Sciences at the University of Cape Coast over the weekend.

He added that the service has embarked on a number of interventions which includes decentralizing recruitment with quote based on the staffing norms.

"The service will be given recruitment quotes to the regions and health facilities to advertise and manage their recruitment process," he said.

He explained that Ghana Health Service will no longer post health workers from headquarters, saying "health workers who have been granted financial clearance and wish to work with the service would have to go to their preferred regions to compete for the available vacancies."

Dr Nsiah Asare called on the newly trained doctors to accept the challenge to serve Ghanaians especially in the deprived areas where their services are most needed.

On his part the Vice Chancellor of the University of Cape Coast, Prof Joesph Ghartey Ampiah said the school of medical sciences still struggles with some challenges of inadequate infrastructure.

He therefore appealed to GETFund to release funds to help complete some structure at the H. S. Amonoo- Kuofie medical village.

In all a total of 56 graduated from the University of Cape Coast School of medical sciences.