The trend for young doctors and nurses to seek higher salaries and better working conditions, mainly in the West, is killing the healthcare sector in Ghana, a senior public servant said.
”It is the single most significant impact on healthcare delivery in this country,” Ghana Health Service head Agyeman Badu Akosah told Agence France-Presse in an interview.
Ghana currently has about 2 000 doctors — one for every 11 000 inhabitants. This compares with one doctor per 2 000 people in the United States.
Many of the country’s trained doctors and nurses leave to work in countries such as Britain, the United States, Jamaica and Canada, in what many refer to as the brain drain.
”We have hospitals .. that do not have a single doctor, that are run by enrolled nurses, who were originally trained to assist professional nurses in the delivery of care,” Akosah said.
”There are more Ghanaian nurses in London than in Accra,” said a diplomat in the region who requested anonymity.
According to Ghana’s official statistics institute, in the period 1999 to 2004, 448 doctors, or 54% of those trained in the period, left to work abroad.
The phenomenon, whilst not exclusive to Ghana, has taken on such proportions here that President John Kufuor in his March 6 speech for the 50th anniversary of independence urged the nation’s youth ”to resolve to stay at home using your energies and your enthusiasm to serve Africa”. — Sapa-AFP