DR SORY TOURS UPPER WEST (OCT 9, PAGE 20)

THE Director General of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), Dr Elias Sory, has called on the Nurses and Midwives Council to as a matter of urgency, review the embargo on admission of community health nurses and their prevention from performing midwifery functions.
He said the policy as it stood now hindered effective healthcare delivery, especially in very remote areas.
Dr Sory said this when he was confronted with the difficulty under which health personnel, especially community health nurses operated, during a tour of some areas in the Upper West Region.
He stated that when decisions on the issue were made more flexible, they would help solve the problem of lack of midwives in some critical areas.
Reacting to concerns that some districts in the region lacked the required professionals to carry out certain specific functions such as midwifery and also to man particularly the various Community Health Planning and Services (CHPS) centres, Dr Sory said that should not be the case.
He explained that community health nurses were trained by all the 10 regions and therefore there should not be any situation where some regions would be lacking such health professionals, necessitating the call for a critical look at the admission procedure into such institutions.
The tour which took Dr Sory and his team to Jirapa, Han, Ping, Nadowli and Kayiri, was organised by the Japan International Co-operation Agency (JICA) in collaboration with the GHS to evaluate the concept of CHPS compound since its inception by the JICA in the region in 2006.
Dr Sory was accompanied by the Chief Director at the Ministry of Health (MOH), Madam Salamatu Abdul Salaam, the Upper West Regional Director of Health Services, Dr Alexis Nang Beifubah, the Director of Policy Planning Monitoring and Evaluation, Dr Frank Nyonator and representatives from JICA.
“Admission of community health nurses must be based on where such nurses were supposed to work and not because a district is sponsoring them. In any case, these students are sponsored generally by the government and not the districts”, he stated.
Dr Sory said that had been the situation because the country over the years, failed to come out with a major policy decision on such issues, stressing “the government must take realistic measures on the issue by enacting a law”.
He stated that some of the laws of the country had been distorted because even after they had been used under military regimes, they were still being used currently”.
The director general advised district directors of the service to be assertive and strive to make an input when certain major decisions were to be taken.
He commended the JICA for its efforts to uplift healthcare delivery in the country.
Earlier, Dr Sory and his entourage called on the Upper West Regional Minister, Mr Mahmud Khalid and his deputy, Mr Cesar Kale where he stressed the need for practical measures to be instituted to nip in the bud the canker of alcohol abuse in the region.
He expressed regret that the literates who were supposed to conscientise the unfortunate illiterates, were rather the main people leading the fray.
For his part, the regional minister reiterated the call for doctors to undertake national service, saying “the housemanship is part of the medical school training and not national service”.
He said such a decision could be very beneficial to the Upper West since doctors would be posted under the scheme to work in the region.
Mr Khalid further appealed to the director general to strive in improving the number of doctors in the region.