Council to embark on exercise to check advertising by Doctors

The Medical and Dental Council will soon embark on an aggressive and sustained exercise to check the use of various channels by some medical and dental practitioners in the promotion of their businesses and themselves.

Miss Doris Ocansey, a member of the Medical and Dental Council, said the exercise will begin with pulling down of billboards and large posters being used by such medical practitioners to advertise their practice.

She was speaking on the topic "The Legal Implications of The Medical and Dental Law and The NRCD 91 of 1972", at a seminar on medical ethics, on Thursday for newly trained doctors of the School of Medical Science (SMS) of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST).

Some 100 newly trained doctors attended the one-day seminar organised by the Medical and Dental Council and the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital.

It was designed to give the newly trained doctors a greater insight into the medical ethics and how they could be explored to bring dignity to the profession.

Miss Ocansey said, "the medical profession is a brotherhood and it will therefore be morally wrong and unethical to allow others to advertise their businesses and themselves, so as to have undue advantage over their colleagues."

She said in spite of the advocacy against such a practice by medical practitioners, advertising by some doctors and their work was still on the ascendancy.

Mis Ocansey said the council is also resolved to ensure that doctors trained outside the country and willing to practice in Ghana will take an examination to certify their competence first.

She said this does not amount to discrimination but geared at protecting the integrity of medical practice in Ghana.

Professor Yaw Adu-Gyamfi, President of the Ghana Medical Association (GMA), disabused the minds of some people that because the GMA also champions and seeks the welfare of its members, it had virtually become a trade union.

"Welfare, in the form of seeking better remuneration for our members, cars to make them mobile and housing, only forms a fraction of the overall mission of the GMA.''

He said even though membership of the association is voluntary it is important for practising doctors to join it.

Rev Fr Appiah Poku, Senior Lecturer, Behavioural Sciences of the SMS, urged doctors to place the needs of their patients above all other considerations.