The Ghana Health Services (GHS) will come out with firm and decisive measures to address the serious human resource problem affecting the country's health sector by the end of the year, Professor Agyeman Badu Akosah, Director-General of the GHS, has announced.
He said the decision point had been reached, pointing out that the nation cannot allow investment into the training of health professionals without getting returns on such investment.Just as individuals have fundamental human rights, so has the country some rights, he added.
Professor Akosah was addressing the opening ceremony of the 19th annual general conference of the Association of Health Services Administrators in Ghana at the Lasab Hotel in Kumasi on Wednesday.
The three-day conference had the theme, "Quality Assurance - Prerequisite for Sustainable Health Insurance Scheme".The Director-General reminded health professionals that they have a duty to endear their patients, saying, "we should see our patients as the reason why we are in our profession".
Professor Akosah criticised a situation where health workers appear to be running the system for their own benefits and not for patients and said, " the fact that we are few should not make us do what we want".He challenged the health administrators to institute measures to ensure that the right things were done at the hospitals and other health facilities.These include streamlining of appointment and records systems, bed occupancy and making sure that the duty roster were followed among other things.
Professor Akosah called for concerted efforts on the part of health workers to move the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) agenda on a faster pace.
