Tamale, April 14, GNA - Dr. Elias Sory, Northern Regional Director of Health Services, has observed that the inadequacies of all categories of health personnel was impacting negatively on the provision of quality healthcare delivery in the country, especially in the three Northern Regions.
He said the situation was so gloomy that, if pragmatic measures were not taken soon to train more health personnel of all categories, a time would come when the health personnel, who were ageing would phase out and the systems would collapse.
Dr. Sory made the observation at the graduation ceremony of 99 Health Aides in Tamale on Thursday.
The grandaunts had undergone a six-month training course on "organisation of the health structure, structure of the body and its functions, general clinical observations and first aid in health and emergencies" among others.
Dr. Sory, who lamented the shortage of medical doctors and other paramedics in the region, said, "We needed 52 medical doctors but as at now we have to do with only 17. We also needed 70 medical assistants but at present only 40 are at post and whose ages are above 50 years and would soon go on retirement".
"This situation suggests that we must give serious attention to the training of health personnel not only for the public sector as it use to be, but also for the private sector to enhance quality healthcare delivery in the in the country", he said.
"Our training should be geared more towards providing services for the private sector and not only for the public sector", he added.
Dr. Sory announced that the training of Clinic Assistants would begin in the region in October this year and appealed to the district assemblies in the region to sponsor qualified persons in their areas to undertake the training, so that the health facilities could benefit from their services, when they complete.
He suggested to the government to use funds meant for the rehabilitation of the Tamale Teaching Hospital (TTH) for renovation works at the Tamale Central Hospital to decongest the TTH and to pave way for any major work that would be carried out on the facility. He explained that, if this were not done, patients would not have any hospital to attend, when major works at the TTH begun. The Northern Regional Minister, Alhaji Abubakar Saddique Boniface in a speech read on his behalf said despite some improvement in health service delivery over the past years, maternal and child mortality figures in the country were still high.
"The situation is even gloomier in the Northern, Upper East and Upper West Regions. For example, while the national figure for less than five child mortality rate is 111 per 1000, that of the Northern Region is 154 per 1000, while the Upper West Region records 208 deaths per 1000".
"These are unacceptable high and something must be done to halt the high trend," he said.
Alhaji Boniface noted that access to skilled health care during pregnancy, birth and post-natal period had been central to both World Health Organisation (WHO) and the government objectives of making child delivery safer.
He said despite efforts of the WHO and the government, unnecessary deaths continued to occur in the rural communities as a result of shortage of trained health personnel.
He said the shortage of health workers had rendered public education on diseases otherwise preventable, had become difficult and something ineffective and appealed the Health Aides to act as agents of health educators in the rural communities.
Mr Cosmas Alhassan, Northern Regional Course Coordinator said the Enrolled and Community Health Nurses were increasingly being converted to the professional grade and this showed that in the next few years the health sector would be left with wholly professional nursing personnel, particularly in the clinical area.
He said the situation was not tenable as it was not cost effective and the health sector resource would not be able to support it. "This is why the Health Aides programme is instituted to provide multipurpose functions in all health care institutions and to allow professionals to concentrate on their essential and more sophisticated duties", he said.
