Use African approach to train health professionals -Odoom

Kumasi, Sept.22, GNA - Mr Abraham Dwumah Odoom, Deputy Minister of Health has advocated the search for a truly African approach to the training and human resource development in the health sector. He said it would be extremely beneficial for the people in the Africa region to give due consideration to harmonizing resources to solve the peculiar health problems facing the continent. Mr Odoom made the call at the opening of the fifth international annual "Advances in Medicine" Continuing Medical Education conference in Kumasi on Monday.

The four-day conference, which is being organised by the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) in collaboration with the Ghana College of Physicians and Surgeons, the Omsted Outreach and African Medical Partners of the USA, is under the theme; "Preventing needless deaths in Africa".

It aims at offering continuing training for medical and health practitioners in their specialized field and up-date their knowledge to the technological and medical advances in their various fields of specialization.

Participants from the USA, Canada, Nigeria, Cote d' Ivoire, Sweden among others are attending the conference.

Mr Odoom said while the issue of quality was an essential feature of efforts to upgrade knowledge and develop the skills of health personnel, the goodwill to enable them perform also remained paramount. It was for this reason that the government of Ghana had committed significant resources to the expansion of the training facilities and to create incentives to allow trained health professionals to stay and work in the country.

The Deputy Minister called for effective collaboration between centres of expertise and excellence in various African countries to develop training programmes that would benefit the whole continent in the spirit of cooperation.

Mr Odoom appealed to the participants to extend their discussions on issues that affected quality health care delivery at the regional and district hospitals.

Mr Emmanuel Asamoah Owusu-Ansah, Ashanti Regional Minister, said the rapid technological advances in medicine called for frequent upgrading of the knowledge and skills of health professionals. Mr Owusu-Ansah commended the management of KATH and said the initiative was in line with the government's efforts at providing the needed material and human resources to provide health care delivery and reduce preventable deaths in the country.

Dr Anthony Nsiah Asare, Chief Executive of KATH, said the conference provided a unique opportunity for health professionals to keep pace with developments in various professions in health so as to enhance their capacity to deliver quality evidence based services to patients. He noted that investing in the continuing medical education and post graduate training programmes would be helping to build the capacities of health professionals to offer better services.

It would also stem the current brain drain of health professionals by localizing post graduate training as the pursuit of courses abroad was a contributing factor to the phenomenon of brain drain.