Nurses and doctors to apply for jobs

Nurses and doctors are now to apply for jobs themselves by applying and attending interviews before they will be placed or posted to health institutions.

Until recently, nurses and doctors were placed by the Ghana Health Service (GHS) to various health facilities across the country, a situation which gave room for some of them to reject postings to deprive communities.

However, the Director General of the GHS, Dr. Anthony Nsiah Asare at the second senior managers meeting in Accra today (November 13, 2018) said doctors and nurses who received financial clearance from the Ministry of Finance will seek for placement and postings at the regional levels.

The three-day meeting which brought together health directors and senior management staff in the health service across the country was to review the performances of the service at the regional levels.

Focus on existing gaps

According to Dr Nsiah the GHS would announce the vacancies in the respective regions of the country for the health professionals to apply for the positions, go through the interview process and if they are picked they start work.

“Let me emphasize that henceforth, with all financial clearance to the service, staff will go through interview process at the regions while placements and postings done according to the existing gaps”, he stated.

The new form of placement and postings, Dr. Asare said was to ensure a fair distribution of health workers across the country, noting that 48 per cent of the health professionals resided in Accra while the remaining 52 per cent were distributed among the nine other regions.

Making deprived communities attractive

To make the deprived attractive for health professionals to choose, the Director General said efforts were being made to put up accommodation facilities in some communities.

However, he urged the regional coordinating councils, municipal, metropolitan and district chief executives to make accommodation and facilities available and attractive for health professionals to choose deprived communities for placements.

Touching on the achievement of the health service over the past year, Dr Nsiah indicated that Community-based Health Planning and Services (CHPS) compounds increased from 4600 in 2017 to 5,918 this year as part of the efforts to achieve universal access to health.

Also, he said there was screening centres and mental health units were established in all regional hospitals and some district hospitals to screen non-communicable diseases.

Additionally, he said Ghana achieved a total fertility rate of 3.9 in 2017 compared to 6.4 in 1988 and more than three in 10 which represented 31 per cent of married women between ages of 15-49 used any method of family planning.

Dr Nsiah however, acknowledged the challenges in the sector including inadequate equipments and resources to work with it.

Additionally, he said the declining donor funding support imposed a challenge to sustaining the gains made which called for effective domestic resource mobilisation, new initiatives and innovations and prudent use of resources.

E-learning video

The Director General also launched an online learning video on medical certification of cause of death for Physicians at the ceremony.

He said the training is to enable the Physicians build their capacity in medical certification of cause of death, since only few of the total number of deaths that occurred in country were medically certified.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) also presented laptops and desktop computers to GHS to be distributed to seven regions across the country.