Use African approach to train
health professionals —Odoom
Kumasi,
Sept.22, Ghanadot/GNA – Mr Abraham Dwumah Odoom, Deputy
Minister of Health has advocated the search for a truly
African approach to the training and human resource
development in the health sector.
He said it would be extremely beneficial for the people
in the Africa region to give due consideration to
harmonizing resources to solve the peculiar health
problems facing the continent.
Mr Odoom made the call at the opening of the fifth
international annual “Advances in Medicine” Continuing
Medical Education conference in Kumasi on Monday.
The four-day conference, which is being organised by the
Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) in collaboration
with the Ghana College of Physicians and Surgeons, the
Omsted Outreach and African Medical Partners of the USA,
is under the theme; “Preventing needless deaths in
Africa”.
It aims at offering continuing training for medical and
health practitioners in their specialized field and
up-date their knowledge to the technological and medical
advances in their various fields of specialization.
Participants from the USA, Canada, Nigeria, Cote d’
Ivoire, Sweden among others are attending the
conference.
Mr Odoom said while the issue of quality was an
essential feature of efforts to upgrade knowledge and
develop the skills of health personnel, the goodwill to
enable them perform also remained paramount.
It was for this reason that the government of Ghana had
committed significant resources to the expansion of the
training facilities and to create incentives to allow
trained health professionals to stay and work in the
country.
The Deputy Minister called for effective collaboration
between centres of expertise and excellence in various
African countries to develop training programmes that
would benefit the whole continent in the spirit of
cooperation.
Mr Odoom appealed to the participants to extend their
discussions on issues that affected quality health care
delivery at the regional and district hospitals.
Mr Emmanuel Asamoah Owusu-Ansah, Ashanti Regional
Minister, said the rapid technological advances in
medicine called for frequent upgrading of the knowledge
and skills of health professionals.
Mr Owusu-Ansah commended the management of KATH and said
the initiative was in line with the government’s efforts
at providing the needed material and human resources to
provide health care delivery and reduce preventable
deaths in the country.
Dr Anthony Nsiah Asare, Chief Executive of KATH, said
the conference provided a unique opportunity for health
professionals to keep pace with developments in various
professions in health so as to enhance their capacity to
deliver quality evidence based services to patients.
He noted that investing in the continuing medical
education and post graduate training programmes would be
helping to build the capacities of health professionals
to offer better services.
It would also stem the current brain drain of health
professionals by localizing post graduate training as
the pursuit of courses abroad was a contributing factor
to the phenomenon of brain drain.
GNA
