Health Ministry gets nod to employ over 8,000 health professionals
The Health Ministry has been given the nod to employ over 8,000 health professionals.
This new directive was contained in a letter from the Finance Ministry to the Health Ministry.
The letter, signed by the Deputy Finance Minister, Abena Osei-Opare noted:” The Ministry of Health is hereby granted financial clearance to enable the ministry post 8, 076 nurse assistant clinical and nurse assistant preventive who completed in 2017 from various public health training institutions.
“The Ministry is to ensure that the nurse assistant clinical and nurse assistant preventive staff have their documents processed in time and placed on the mechanized payroll to enable the controller and A-G’s department effect payment of their salaries,” excerpts of the statement read.
Meanwhile, the effective date of the appointed person should not be earlier than November, the authority further directed.
The news comes after unemployed health professionals have held a series of demonstration demanding to be posted.
Members of the Graduate Unemployed Nurses and Midwives Association, in January this year, threatened to demonstrate against the government for failing to clear them for posting.
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With healthcare professionals contracting COVID-19, there has been pressure on the government to employ more nurses to reduce pressure on the country’s healthcare professionals.
Successive governments over the years had struggled to employ nurses. Although several health facilities are without adequate number of nurses as budgetary constraints tie the government’s hands.
An assessment by the Ghana Registered Nurses and Midwives Association revealed in June 2017 that Ghana will need not less than 38,000 nurses and midwives to bridge the nurse-patient ratio.
The WHO nurse to patient ratio is pegged at least 40 nurses for every 10,000 population but Ghana’s statistics is said to be 22 nurses for every 10,000 people.
In 2005, the government introduced a bonding system to curtail a shortfall of nurses as many headed off for better opportunities in Europe, Asia and the United States.
It began a scheme funding the education of nurses who then had to agree to work for the next five years in Ghana.
But now the government says it has enough nurses and it is no longer useful to keep them under bond.
This has created an army of unemployed nurses, threatening demonstrations when government fails to employ them.