By Christiana Afua Nyarko 

Accra, March 3, GNA – The Ministry of Health in collaboration with stakeholders has launched its Public Health Workforce Strategic Plan to improve the quality of healthcare delivery in the country. 

Mrs Tina Gift Mensah, the Deputy Minister of Health, said the strategic plan would guide the Ministry, agencies, and other stakeholders to address some weaknesses in the health workforce.  

Focus will be on recruitment, workforce distribution, staff development, among a host of other deficits. 

The five-year document presents a roadmap to guide the restructuring of the Human Resource of the Public Health Workforce; ensuring that the country’s Universal Coverage Target is fully achieved, using the One Health Concept by 2030. 

The strategic plan comes at a time health service workers in the country are increasingly faced with several challenges hindering the effective response to the population’s demand for care and services, which are often inadequate. 

The Deputy Minister said: “We have a lot of nurses but as to whether we have the mix caliber, that is the thing. At times too, we have a whole lot of nurses who are not needed at a particular time.” 

 “So, this will help us to focus on our gaps – the areas that we need more specialised staff to work with, so when you are even admitting, you know right from the beginning that I need community health nurses because, this is the time that we are burdened with strange diseases and  then we need people to go to our various communities and homes”, She added. 

The document, she explained, would address the challenges in the provision of incentives for health professionals and the issues of migration. 

“Most at times you will train the various nurses but, sending them to wherever you want to send them becomes a problem because, there are no incentives for them, so it becomes a problem. Our nurses are leaving…we are looking at migration, what we need here and those we don’t need… if we implement the document, it will lessen the burden and the challenges, ” she said. 

Mrs Mensah said that the plan was in consistency with Ghana’s vision to ensure that “citizens enjoy healthy and productive lives in a healthy environment”. 

The inability to appropriately implement the strategic plan, she said would be detrimental to the health needs of the people in the country. 

She implored all agencies and institutions to ensure that the directives in the 148-page document were implemented.