Health Minister briefs Parliament on doctors’ postings
The Ministry of Health has, since September 2014, posted 486 medical doctors (house officers), made up of dental and medical officers who were trained locally and abroad.
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Out of the number, 218 were posted in September 2014, while 268 newly trained medical doctors were posted in May and June 2015.
The Minister of Health, Mr Alexander Segbefia, announced this when he answered questions in Parliament yesterday.
He told the House that the doctors were posted to all the teaching hospitals and some regional hospitals to do their first year housemanship/internship, in compliance with the requirement of the Medical and Dental Council on housemanship/internship.
The Member of Parliament (MP) for Effiduase/Asokore, Mr Frank Boakye Agyen, had wanted to know whether the ministry had been able to employ all newly trained Ghanaian medical doctors, and if so, how many had been posted and where they had been posted to.
Asked why some of the doctors were not posted to district hospitals, Mr Segbefia explained that they were initially posted to the teaching and the regional hospitals, as was the requirement.
When quizzed further about why the doctors stayed so long before being posted when the hospitals were in dire need of their services, he indicated that the delays in posting and payment of salaries resulted from the time spent on registering the new doctors and placing them on the payroll.
Placement of doctors
Mr Segbefia said the ministry was working around the clock to shorten the period of registration and placement of doctors on the payroll.
Asked by Mr Isaac Osei, the MP for Subin, about the government’s policy on newly trained Ghanaian doctors, the minister stated that it had been the policy of the government to employ all trained Ghanaian doctors.
Responding to a question by the MP for Atebubu/Amantin, Mr Sanja Nanja, on measures being put in place to provide an additional ward for the Atebubu/Amantin District Hospital, whose 45-bed capacity was shared among male and female patients, the minister said the ministry was currently negotiating for concessionary funding from several financiers to construct more district hospitals and expand existing ones nationwide.
He said the Atebubu District Hospital had been ranked second in the Brong Ahafo Region for expansion.
MDA Bill, 2014
Meanwhile, the House has taken the Millennium Development Authority (Amendment) Bill, 2014 through a second reading.
The bill seeks to expand the objectives and functions of the authority for it to have the legal backing to enable it to implement the terms of Compact II and any other development programme of similar nature.
According to the bill, the United States of America (USA) has, again, selected Ghana to benefit from another development programme, under the terms of another agreement termed Compact II, which will focus on the development of the energy sector.
The main purpose of Compact II is to enable the country to carry out development infrastructure involving six projects in the energy sector.
They are the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) financial and operation turnaround project, the National Entrepreneurship Development Company Limited financial and operational turnaround project, the regulatory strengthening and capacity building project, the access project, the power generation sector improvement project and the energy efficiency and demand side management project.