INADEQUATE HEALTH PERSONNEL IN UE WORRYING (D/G Saturday, September 13, 2008. PAGE 22)

THE inadequacy of health personnel in the Upper East Region is becoming increasingly alarming, the Regional Director of Health Services, Dr John K. Awoonor-Williams, has observed.
Presently, the doctor patient-ratio stands as one doctor to 29,000 patients as against the national ratio of one doctor to 13,000 patients, while in the case of nurses, the ratio is one nurse to 1,243 patients.
At the 22nd annual general conference of the Public Health Nurses Group (PHNG) at Bolgatanga, Dr Awoonor-Williams said the region was not only beset with poor doctor-patient ratio, but it also faced the gloomy prospect of most of the health staff posted to the region declining the offer.
“Out of 11 doctors posted to the region over the last four years, only one reported,” he said, adding that that was a very sad situation.
“There are more doctors at the Ridge Hospital in Accra than the total number of doctors put together in the Northern, Upper East and Upper West regions. The same can be said of nurses and other categories of staff,” Dr Awoonor-Williams stated.
According to him, currently the region had a total of 842 nurses of all categories deployed in 166 health facilities constituting an average of five nurses per facility.
He described the situation as a very serious setback to accessible health care in the region and a major setback in achieving the millennium development goal targets, if the current ratio was not addressed immediately by the government.
Dr Awoonor-Williams, said despite the challenges, the region had the highest number of baby-friendly facilities. According to him, out of 237 facilities countrywide, 51 of them, representing 22 per cent, were in the region, an indication of the quality of service in the region.
While bemoaning the poor staff strength of health practitioners in the region, the regional director noted that one major problem within the health sector was poor staff attitude and poor customer care, which had brought the corporate image of the service into disrepute.
He, therefore, called on nurses to change their attitude towards patients “as that bad attitude drives away many patients from the public health facilities”.
Dr Awoonor-Williams also called on nurses in leadership positions to mentor the young ones that passed through their hands to give their best to patients, adding, “We must commit ourselves to the service of our clients and improve on supervision at all levels.”
Touching on the theme for the conference: “Promoting community involvement in reducing maternal morbidity and mortality, the role of the public health nurse,” Dr Awoonor-Williams said the death of a pregnant woman was totally unacceptable.
He, therefore, charged the practitioners to do whatever they could as health providers to curtail the problem.
“Maternal mortality is not only a health issue, but also has both economic and social ramifications. We must, therefore, rededicate ourselves to ensure that we save our mothers from unnecessary deaths,” he stressed.
The Chairperson of the PHNG, Ms Beatrice Appah, said globally, 585,000 women died every year due to complications that arose from pregnancy and child birth, adding that 579,150 deaths, representing 99 per cent occurred in developing countries such as Ghana.
She, therefore, called for the involvement of the community as one of the cheapest but effective methods of averting the situation.
The Director in charge of Public Health of the Ghana Health Service, Dr Joseph Amankwa, noted that the death of a pregnant woman did not only mean two deaths at the same time, but also a loss of family physician and bread winner, adding that it was also a recipe for breakdown of social cohesion and development.
He proposed the establishment of a Presidential Commission on Maternal Health to strongly re-position and give maternal health the recognition it deserved
The Upper East Regional Minister, Mr Alhassan Samari, admonished all health personnel to be good ambassadors of the National Health Insurance Scheme and the government’s free maternal health care policy to help reach the Millennium Development Goals four and five.