MoH to regularise foreign voluntary medical service (Monday, Sept 21, 2009)

THE Ministry of Health (MoH) is to establish a Foreign Voluntary Medical Service Department to regularise the activities of visiting medical teams into the country.
In addition, the ministry would develop a register of all Ghanaians as well as non-Ghanaian medical doctors resident in the US who would like to work in Ghana to enable the ministry facilitate their entry and operations when the time comes.
This was announced by the Minister of Health, Dr George Sipa-Adjah Yankey, in Accra last Thursday, at a meeting with a team of health professionals from Kybele Education, a non-profit making organisation, based in the US, which collaborates with health sectors in developing countries on issues relating to maternal health.
The team, which has established partnership with mainly the Ridge Hospital in Accra for years, is currently in the country with 20 of its members to continue with that collaborative effort and also extend it to the Brong Ahafo Regional Hospital in Sunyani for the next couple of weeks.
To facilitate the work of medical visiting teams in the future, Dr Yankey has asked the Medical and Dental Council (MDC) to shorten the period the teams went through to get certification to enable them work here.
He also requested the council to scrap the $400 registration fee paid by a visiting medical team, since it was Ghana that benefited from services provided by such visits.
Explaining the rationale behind the establishment of the Foreign Voluntary Medical Service Department, the minister said it would regularise and institutionalise contributions made by visiting medical teams to the country's health delivery system.
Dr Yankey said to enable the country continue to benefit from the "brain gain" it was enjoying, the ministry would develop a register of all Ghanaian and non-Ghanaian medical doctors resident in the US who would like to work in Ghana.
He said the attempt was part of the Government's desire to make Ghana the number one medical hub of Africa, since the country would benefit from a wide range of expertise during such visits.
Addressing the team, the Health Minister said, "We will wish that some of your members with expertise and specialities which we do not currently have here will make these available to us, and as we move our programme forward, we will need the services of these specialists to support our medical doctors and other health workers undertake scheduled surgical procedures.”
In her presentation, Dr Medge Owen, who is the President of Kybele Education, said her organisation's collaboration with the Ridge Hospital over the years had helped to improve operations of the hospital significantly.
She said the various interventions introduced because of the partnership had helped to reduce maternal mortality rate by 20 per cent and also the incidence of stillbirth by 30 per cent.
She stated that the assistance came in the area of training in relieving labour, improved delivery rooms, creation of strategic plans, ultrasound training programmes, equipment servicing, nurse anaesthetic training as well as computerised record system among many other programmes.
For his part, Dr Yemi Olufolabi of the Duke University, Anaesthesia Department, North Carolina, US, talked about that introduction at the Ridge Hospital, a method which allowed women to undergo Caesarian section without being put to sleep.
He commended the Ghanaian health authorities for providing all the needed assistance to the team as well as the collaborative work provided by the local professionals which had so far helped the visitors to perform successfully.
The Director General of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), Dr Elias Sory, expressed his gratitude to the visiting medical professionals, and expressed hope that the collaborative efforts would continue and extend to other health facilities.