Health authorities strategise on recruitment of professionals

Kumasi, Sept. 27, GNA - Health training institutions and regulatory bodies have been urged to design curricula that will integrate modern scientific findings with educational projects to enable both students and tutors perceive society as the location of man's creation. Mr Abraham Dwuma Odoom, Deputy Minister of Health, who made the call said this would not only make them employ professionalism and care in their dealings with society but it would also create the sense of communism and patriotism in students and create the right corporate image for the health profession.

He was speaking at a workshop in Kumasi on Thursday to strategise a means to recruit and retain health care training tutors in the sector. It was organized by the Human Resource for Development (HRD) of the Ministry of Health with support from the National population Council and was attended by tutors, principals and other stakeholders in the training of health professionals from the ten regions. Mr Odoom said some of the human resource for health challenges facing the health sector included equitable distribution of health workforce, productivity of health workforce as well as the scaling up the production of health workers.

He said attracting and retaining health tutors had been a priority of the Ministry of Health due to the government's desire to produce large number of health personnel to deliver essential services to the people, especially in rural and deprived areas. The Deputy Minister said as part of the initiatives to attract and retain tutors, the Ministry, in collaboration with the universities introduced tailor made and sandwich educational programmes for health professionals at the degree and postgraduate levels. The Ministry also instituted a book and research allowance scheme in 2004 with funding from the government to strengthen tutors' capabilities in education and scientific research while graduates were also recruited from the universities into the health training institutions.

As a result of these interventions, health tutors increased three fold in the last five years.

However, he said health tutors in public and mission institutions represented only two per cent of 42,000 health workers in the country, adding that, health tutors were still inadequate to meet the increasing number of students being admitted into training institutions. Mr Odoom said the Ministry would continue to strengthen capacities of health training institutions through building, redesigning and the provision of technical and financial support for the development of education of health professionals.

Dr Yaw Antwi Boasiako, Director of Human Resource for Health Development, advised the tutors to accept postings to deprived areas, adding that their refusal placed a heavy burden on the few who accepted to serve in those areas.

Dr Mrs Gladys Ashitey, a Deputy Minister of Health, donated assorted health books valued at GH=A23,200 to be distributed to health training schools in the Ashanti and Brong Ahafo Regions.