Kintampo Hospital to get a doctor

The Ministry of Health is making serious arrangements to post a doctor to Kintampo Hospital as well as other hospitals where there is none.

Mr Moses Dani Baah, Deputy Minister of Health, told Parliament on Thursday that the ministry was facing acute shortage of doctors in the country with the current ratio of one doctor to 16,800 people.

He said it was unfortunate that out of the about 125 doctors produced annually from the three medical schools and from training abroad, only 50 per cent were in the country.

He was answering Mr Yaw Effah-Baafi, NDC-Kintampo, who wanted to know when a doctor would be posted to the Kintampo District Hospital where there was none.

Mr Dani Baah said so critical was the shortage of doctors in the country that the government entered into an agreement with Cuba to fill in the gap particularly in the deprived rural areas.

He said currently there were about 154 Cuban doctors working in various hospitals in the country. In another development, Captain Nkrabea Effah-Dartey (rtd) said a new refuse dumping site was being created at Oblogo, near Accra to replace the one at Gbawe, which had only three weeks to close down.

This was in an answer to a question Mr Ernest Armah, NDC-Ga South, asked as to why the Waste Management Department of Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) continued dumping refuse at Djaman in contravention of directives of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Capt Effah-Dartey said measures had been put in place to control any environmental hazards and the EPA was daily monitoring the situation.