COMMUNITY HEALTH NURSES TO SIGN LOGBOOKS IN UWR (PAGE 22)

THE Upper West Regional Health Directorate is to introduce a logbook for community health nurses and field technicians as part of measures to streamline their activities.
According to the Deputy Director of Public Health Services in the region, Dr Kofi Issah, the measure was to sanitise the operations of those categories of health workers at the districts and sub-districts to improve health care delivery at that level.
He stated that since community health nurses and other health workers such as field technicians were the first point of call, they must live up to expectation.
Dr Issah was speaking at a durbar to inaugurate a Community-based Health Planning and Services (CHPS) centre at Nakore and Gbegru in the Wa Municipality.
He said even though more nurses were being sent out into various districts, the performance of the community health nurses, among others remained stagnant.
“We visit some areas and we realise some of the staff have either vacated their posts, absented themselves or were up to some form of misconduct”, Dr Issah stated.
Dr Issah said currently, some officers had gone round the region to collate data on personnel at the various districts as a first step towards sensitisation process.
He stated that the directorate had received about 224 additional motorcycles to augment the existing ones to be distributed to the respective health centres at the grassroots.
“Due to the poor road network linking the various communities in the region, we want to ensure that health staff got very close to the people hence the extension of CHPS services to all parts of the region.
Dr Issah said out of the 192 CHPS zones earmarked for the region, only 57 were in operation, and charged the health staff who were manning such facilities to work assiduously to make them fully operational.
He further advised them to be guided by the core values and ethics of the Ghana Health Service when discharging their duties.
The Wa Municipal Director of Health Services, Mrs Beatrice Kunfah explained the concept of the CHPS compound to the people, saying “It is meant to relocate health workers into communities to work in partnership with the community members.
She added that since its inception, CHPS had improved access and the delivery of quality health care to many communities.
Mrs Kunfah advised health workers stationed in the communities not to remain at the offices but to move to the people in their homes and equip them with the requisite information on their health needs.
The Wa Municipal Chief Executive (MCE), Mr Duogo Yakubu for his part, urged the health staff to cultivate good working relations with the chiefs and people in the communities so that their efforts would yield the expected results.