Health workers "without the heart" must quit -DG

Begoro (E/R), April 20, GNA - The Director General of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), Professor Agyeman Badu Akosa, has advised health workers who do not have the tolerance to treat patients with care and love to start thinking of leaving the service.

He said sick people normally "do not behave normally" and needed to be handled with tender, care, love and courtesy in conformity with the policies of the GHS.

Prof. Akosa gave the advice when he met with health staff at the Begoro Government and Tetteh Quarshie Memorial Hospitals on the first day of his five-day working visit to the Eastern Region.

The visit also took him to health centres at Dedeisowireko, Bososu, and Obuoho, all in the Fanteakwa District, Mangoase Health Post and the Tandankrom CHIP Centre in the Akuapem North District.

Prof. Akosa said the GHS was doing a lot to improve upon the working conditions of the staff of the service and so the staff must put up their best to merit the facilities that the service was negotiating on their behalf.

He mentioned some of the improvements that had been implemented as the decentralization of promotions in the service to the regions up to the rank of the Deputy Director of Nursing Service (DDNS).

The Director General said it was only from DDNS that the interview and the promotion letters for the affected staff were expected to come from Accra.

Prof. Akosa said the Service had now negotiated and acquired a revolving fund for the acquisition of vehicles for the staff of the service for them to pay by instalment from their salaries.

He said under such facility, this year, the service had received 415 different brands of saloon cars of which 27 had been allocated for the staff in Eastern Region and indicated that, some of the vehicles are meant for nurses and other staff, while there were also motorcycles and bicycles.

Prof. Akosa said the GHS had acquired a facility for the provision of two and three-bedroom flats for its staff that would be paid in 15 years but the facility would have to go through some protocols before the implementation took off.

Prof. Akosa said the GHS would not honour the demand from the son of the late Nene Dom Kwadwo Ahoa, at Mangoase, who donated a three-acre-land for the construction of the Health Post, that the GHS should construct a self-contained house for him, pay an annual rent of five million cedis and employ three of his junior brothers and sisters at the Health Post.

Prof. Akosa explained that the hospital belonged to the community and if the community should sit down for Felema Tetteh Ahoa, the son of Nene Ahoa to harass the staff of GHS at Mangoase, he would not hesitate to remove them from the facility and warned that the GHS would take legal action against Felema Ahoa if he entered the land.

He urged the Regional Director of Health Service to follow the estimate made by the Electricity Company of Ghana for the extension of electricity to the Health Post to ensure that the facility was in place.

Dr Ebenezer Appiah-Denkyira, Eastern Regional Director of Health Service called on communities to negotiate with people owning vehicles in their communities to provide community ambulance service for them so that when patients were referred, they could approach them to provide the needed service.

He explained that, such a facility would reduce the time normally wasted in looking for vehicles to provide such services and could also reduce tension since the amount to be charged could be negotiated in advance and arrangements made for the driver to provide the service first before coming for payment later.

Dr Appiah-Denkyirah also urged health volunteers in communities with health posts to register all pregnant women in their communities so that arrangements would be made for their health education and also for them to indicate where they would like to deliver so that plans were put in place in advance for them to help reduce the need for emergencies.