Government to sign MoUs with US and UK for deployment of health professionals

The Government is expected to sign Memoranda of Understanding (MoUs) with the United States and the United Kingdom in the coming months to facilitate the deployment of Ghanaian health professionals to work in those countries.

The Health Minister, Kwabena Mintah Akandoh, disclosed this at the matriculation of 145 post-basic specialised nursing students at the Kumasi Nursing and Midwifery Training College (NMTC) and the ENT Nursing School in Kumasi under the "Mahama Care" initiative.

The students are being trained in four new post-basic specialisations: cardiology, nephrology, endocrinology and oncology. The intake includes 99 students at Kumasi NMTC and 46 at the ENT Nursing School in Kumasi.

The minister said the planned agreements with the US and UK build on an existing arrangement with Jamaica, under which Ghanaian health workers have already been deployed abroad in batches.

He explained that the structured migration of health professionals is intended to provide financial benefits to the country through remittances from workers abroad.

However, he stressed that measures would be enforced to prevent shortages in critical areas, adding that highly specialised health professionals would be restricted from leaving the country where Ghana faces significant deficits in those fields.

He said the government is also expanding domestic specialist training to meet local and international demand, alongside efforts to strengthen healthcare delivery systems.

As part of ongoing reforms, the ministry has introduced a competency-based curriculum for nursing education and is upgrading several institutions to run post-basic programmes. These include Kumasi NMTC, Korle-Bu NMTC, the ENT Nursing School in Kumasi, Tamale NMTC, and the Critical Care and Perioperative School at Korle-Bu.

Following pilot training programmes in Korle-Bu, Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital and Tamale, the ministry has enrolled 500 nurses in specialised training this year, with plans to increase the annual intake to at least 1,000 over the next three years.