Tema, Sept. 15, GNA-Mr. Kweku Agyeman-Manu, the Minister of Health has called on private and quasi-government health establishments to help the government to achieve its vision of positioning Ghana as the centre for medical tourism in West Africa.
Mr. Agyeman-Manu speaking at the fifth anniversary of the International Maritime Hospital (IMaH) of the Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority (GPHA) said such institutions apart from providing quality health care could also help strengthen the public health sector.
He indicated they could do that by not using money to entice specialists and critical health caregivers to abandon the public health institutions as there was the need to preserve them for the care of the poor.
« Ghana is trying to position itself as centre of forensic tourism in West Africa, there is, therefore, the need to preserve some part of the country’s facilities to achieve that, » he stated.
He noted that a few health professionals were leaving Ghana to outside because of big salaries, disclosing that when recruitment was being done for the University of Ghana Medical Centre (UGMC), over 80 percent of specialist applicants were from the Korle Bu Teaching.
The health minister said it was not right to collapse public health institutions for private ones and discouraged the use of bigger salaries to lure workers from such institutions.
He admitted that there were a lot of challenges in the health sector, but that could be handled adding that Ghana’s good public health sector must be preserved as according to him during the COVID-19 pandemic, the country started contact tracing even before some World class hospitals started.
« We did not have to bring in people from elsewhere to do that, all the people were at the districts, and we just triggered it, and because of this, Ghana has been assessed as one of the two countries in the world that got the COVID-19 management well,” he said.
Mr. Kwaku Ofori Asiamah, Minister of Transport, who was the Guest of Honour, said the theme for the anniversary, “Five years of excellent healthcare poised on mandate delivery,” was appropriate and charged IMaH to use the anniversary to take stock and reflect on their journey so far and the way forward.
Mr. Asiamah said it was the expectation that the Hospital would focus on access to service by considering the provision of affordable, direct access, and acceptable service for all clients.
He said management must make a conscious effort to have dynamic health care centering on whole family care, world-class customer service, and staff engagement, among others.
He called for company policies and initiatives that would enhance staff welfare to provide excellent service to the public stressing that excellent health care does not only focus on infrastructure.
Mr Michael Luguje, Director-General of the GPHA, commended his predecessors for having the vision to construct and operate such a world-class health facility and pledged GPHA management’s continuous support to the hospital to ensure that it delivered quality service and divert all medical tourists to the facility.
Dr. Akwesi Afriyie Achampong, Chief Executive Officer, in a welcome address said the 130-bed-capacity hospital started operation in September 2017 with a core value to provide people-centered excellence service.
Dr. Achampong added that starting with specialized care and five dialysis machines, it currently has 22 and 12 respectively with plans underway to make the referral institution a teaching hospital soon.
IMaH provides 32 services including accident and emergency, acute and critical care, ambulance services, catheterization laboratory, cardiology as well as psychology, and psychiatry.
Others are dental, E.N.T service, echocardiogram, endoscopy, family medicine, morgue, oncology, optometry, pulmonology, pharmaceutical, and many others.
Laudia Sawer
