Dr Anthony Nsiah-Asare, the Director- General of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), has expressed worry about the inequitable distribution of health workers across the country.
According to him, the distribution of health workers was skewed towards urban areas to the detriment of rural and deprived communities.
He said Greater Accra alone has about 42 percent of all medical doctors with the rest of the country contending with the remaining, something that impedes inclusive health service delivery.
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Dr Nsiah-Asare was speaking at the 51st congregation and oath-swearing ceremony of the University of Cape Coast School of Medical Sciences (UCCSMS) on Saturday where a total of 56 students made up of 35 males and 21 females were awarded Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery degrees after the successful completion of their six-year programmes.
Dr. Nsiah-Asare said the anomaly must be tackled with the seriousness it deserved in order not to undermine the achievement made in the health sector over the years and outlined efforts the GHS was preparing to address it.
It included the developing of Human Resource Information System to track health worker availability and distribution.
Again, he said, the Ghana Health Service has developed human resource measures to guide the recruitment and redeployment exercises in the Service.
It was also considering the decentralization of recruitment at the regional level whereby health facilities would be given recruitment quotas to advertise and manage.
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He said a deprived area retention scheme would be developed to provide the necessary support to enable staff accepts the challenge of working in the underserved areas of the country.
Dr. Nsiah-Asare said the GHS needed about 105,440 health workers but could only boast of 61,756, leaving a vacancy rate of 41 percent which was greatest among specialist health professionals such as doctors pharmacists, nurses and para-clinical staff.
Dr. Nsiah-Asare called on the young doctors to accept the challenge of serving Ghanaians in the deprived and underserved areas where their services would be most needed and challenged them to exhibit professional standards and show commitment to the provision of quality and accessible health services.
Source: GNA