President John Dramani Mahama has appealed to health workers across the country to accept postings to underserved communities as part of efforts to strengthen Ghana’s healthcare delivery system.
According to him, government is taking deliberate steps to improve conditions of service and expand recruitment within the sector.
Speaking at the State of the Nation Address (SONA) on February 27 regarding plans for the health sector, he said,
“Service conditions are being implemented to boost morale and retention. Looking ahead, government will expand recruitment and take necessary action to add more health workers into the payroll.”
He acknowledged the uneven distribution of health professionals and outlined measures to address the imbalance.
“We’ll also correct the maldistribution of health workers through targeted incentives for health workers who agree to serve in underserved areas.”
The President then directly appealed to health personnel to respond positively to postings in deprived communities.
“Let me use this opportunity to appeal to our gallant health workers to accept postings to our underserved areas seeing as it is a national call to duty, while we work to ensure that they have an enabling environment to do their work.”
He further indicated that government will expand specialist training programmes to respond to emerging health challenges.
“We’ll also scale up specialist and advanced nursing training to match the country’s changing disease programme.”
President Mahama announced the introduction of new post-basic nursing programmes in cardiology, nephrology, endocrinology and oncology. He added that the two existing programmes, emergency nursing and critical care nursing, will also be scaled up.
He further assured that ongoing infrastructural projects would be completed and health facilities upgraded.
“On health infrastructure, my government remains firm in its commitment not to abandon unfinished projects. We’ll continue to retool facilities, strengthen emergency and disease surveillance systems and ensure that health infrastructure is properly aligned with staffing, equipment and financing.”
