Paramedics in Tamale still on strike

Tamale, April 27, GNA - Despite the call by President John Agyekum Kufuor and the Ghana Health Service for nurses and other health workers to return to work, paramedics at the Tamale Teaching Hospital are still on strike to press home their demands for better salaries and working conditions.

A visit by the GNA to the hospital on Thursday showed that there were no nurses at post while the doors of the consulting rooms and the administration offices were locked up.

At the OutPatients' Department, the benches were empty while there were few patients in some of the wards unattended to. At the Labour Ward, Dr. Daniel Tapang, the Chief Executive of the Hospital and two other doctors were performing a Caesarean operation and could not talk to the GNA.

Some of people who were at the hospital premises said the strike action was becoming irritating and that the striking paramedics were losing public sympathy.

Madam Asana Abdulai, a trader at the Tamale Central Market who was visiting a patient, said there was a public perception that the nurses were now placing more value on money than human lives. She said: "The nurses would have gained more public sympathy if they had heeded the President's call to return to work while negotiations are continuing".

"I wonder what the fate of the nation would be if market women, farmers and drivers...also decided to go on strike," she said. Madam Abdulai appealed to the striking paramedics to return to duty "for the sake of humanity and mother Ghana".