Health workers urged to adopt best work practices

The Upper West Regional Director of the Ghana Health Service, Dr Alexis Nang-Beifuba has cautioned providers of health services in the region against hiding behind dogma and ignorance to disregard best working practices.

According to him, there were a number of new players coming on board and the earlier “we changed in order to meet the new challenges of competition and a well–informed population, the better for us”.

Addressing the 2013 mid–year regional health sector review in Wa, he said, healthcare service delivery was a matter of human rights and not the mercies provided to the population and so all providers should align themselves with the principles of state policy as laid down in the constitution and recognise their roles as only complementing constitutionally mandated bodies in the provision of healthcare services in the region.

Dr Nang–Beifubah said for this to be achieved, it was important for the Upper West Region to organise bigger stakeholders meeting encompassing all players to sign a memorandum to guide “our work so that services provision and utilisation is maximised”.

He said during the period under review, some modest achievements were made in promptly containing the measles outbreak in the Wa West district, by recording zero guinea worm cases and also exceeding all antigens last year.

He said these achievements were most likely not the full picture since “all too often we blame our under – performance on poor documentation, population and more so it was ironic that for the past 10 years staff strength has increased almost four fold and yet we are unable to increase our performance correspondingly”.

Dr Nang – Beifubah expressed happiness that the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) had donated two Toyota Landcruiser ambulances to the Fielmua and Pinna Health centres to facilitate the movement of referred patients to bigger health facilities.

By George Folley/Daily Graphic/Ghana