DOCTORS REFUSE POSTING TO UPPER EAST REGION (D/G, Friday, June 19, 2009. SPREAD)

NO medical doctor has for the past three years accepted posting to the Upper East Region, while the handful of doctors and other health service providers available are seeking for transfer to other parts of the country.
According to the Regional Director of Health Services, Dr John Koku Awoonor-Williams, none of the nine doctors posted to the region in 2007 accepted the offer.
He said in 2008, all the nine doctors posted failed to turn up, adding that as of February this year, none of them had accepted the posting.
Dr Awoonor-Williams disclosed this at a stakeholders’ forum held in Bolgatanga for District Managers of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), service providers and beneficiaries of the scheme.
The forum was to assess the performance of the scheme and service providers and to know the complaints and obstacles faced by the registered members of the scheme in accessing health care with their cards.
Dr Awoonor-Williams said in the midst of inadequate doctors and allied health providers, the health sector in the region was also faced with massive request for transfers by the few remaining, with 95 per cent of all those applying for transfers being indigenes of the region.
He said the health directorate had resorted to appealing to the conscience of those applying for transfers to encourage them to stay back and assist in the health delivery service in the region.
Touching on other challenges facing the smooth operation of the NHIS in the region, Dr Awoonor-Williams said delays in presenting claims by health facilities and other service providers continued to be a major problem to the scheme.
He also cited the deplorable state of most structures at the facilities and appealed to the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) to as a matter of responsibility help in expanding and rehabilitating them and also adding new ones.
Dr Awoonor-Williams noted that in spite of these challenges, the scheme had been able to enrol 71 per cent of the people in the region out of a population of one million and said with the necessary support more people would be registered with the scheme.
He said there had been situations where some service providers had threatened to withhold services because the NHIA had not settled its indebtedness to them.
The regional director warned that nobody had the right to close down any public facility and said the Ghana Health Service and the Ministry of Health would deal drastically with any officer who violated the laws.
The Upper East Regional Manager of the NHIS, Mr Roger Ayine Aposs, said the abuse of the system by families and registered beneficiaries, the poor and dilapidating state of office accommodation, the refusal of pharmaceutical and chemical shops under the scheme to give out drugs to scheme members due to the low price offered for the drugs by the various schemes, were some of the challenges being faced in the region.
Mr Aposs said the NHIA had released GHҐ6,707,745.95 as reinsurance and first and second quarter subsidy to the scheme in the region.
Madam Freda Bartels Mensah, Procurement Manager of NHIA, said efforts were being made to introduce electronic systems into the use of NHIS identity cards by beneficiaries.
She said the NHIA would take into consideration appeals for support for health facilities to make them conducive for use by registered members of the scheme.
The Deputy Upper East Regional Minister, Mrs Lucy Awuni, who chaired the function, said in spite of overwhelming challenges, the NHIS had stood on its feet and charged the managers to work on the challenges facing them to help provide quality service for the people.