Prez Mills stresses need to avoid lawlessness in health delivery

PRESIDENT J.E.A. Mills has touched on the need to place premium on regulating the health sector, saying that without regulation, there is bound to be lawlessness leading to anarchy.
He stressed that where anarchy prevailed, there would be infiltration of untrained personnel, inability to deal with sub-standard practices and infamous conduct in the health fraternity.
“These will undermine efforts towards achieving the health-related Millennium Development Goals (MDGs),” he stated.
President Mills said this in an address read on his behalf by the Minister of Health, Mr Joseph Yieleh Chireh, at the opening of the 15th Annual Conference of the Association of Medical Councils of Africa (AMCOA) in Accra.
The four-day conference is on the theme, “Achieving the Health Related Millennium Development Goals: The Role of Regulatory Bodies”.
The primary purpose of AMCOA is to support medical regulatory authorities in Africa in the protection of the public interest by promoting high standards of medical education, registration and regulation and facilitating the exchange of information among medical authorities.
The President said health delivery in Africa was still a challenge and would continue to be so unless the people made definite efforts for change.
He talked about how developing countries, including Ghana, were struggling to make the level of progress that would lead to the achievement of the 2015 targets, adding, “Even though we have made some progress, our performance on the implementation of child survival interventions and efforts at reducing maternal mortality are lagging behind.”
President Mills attributed the challenges to weak health systems, lack of access to basic proven interventions, the large burden of endemic diseases, coupled with the challenges of malnutrition which continued to conspire to reverse some of the fragile gains so far made.
Giving background information on the formation of the association, a past Rector of the Ghana College of Physicians and Surgeons, Professor Paul Kwame Nyame, said 500 years after a legal onslaught on quacks on the medical field, the quacks still seemed to thrive and prosper, exploiting the ignorance of the peoples of Africa.
“It is imperative that you establish the mechanism which allows a timeous identification of bona fide practitioners from quacks, who sometimes claim forged foreign qualification,” he said.
The President of AMCOA, Professor Y. Mulla, lamented the fact that Africa was lagging behind in achieving the MDGs and added that medical councils should not be seen as book-keepers but entities to ensure quality healthcare delivery.
The Chairman for the event, who is the President of the National House of Chiefs, Wulugunaba Naa Professor J.S. Nabila, advised the participants to exchange ideas that would help improve healthcare delivery in their respective countries.