The Upper East Regional Director of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), Dr. Emmanuel Kofi Dzotsi has revealed that only one surgeon serves the over 1million people in the region.
Speaking on the state of healthcare delivery in the region on A1 Radio’s Day Break Upper East Show, Dr. Dzotsi mentioned that the regional hospital lacked essential specialists.
“The whole region we only have one surgeon, so if it comes to surgical attention, we need a surgeon. And as a regional hospital, we need a traumatologist. If somebody has an accident or so we don’t have that specialist here. We need a specialist in eye care. Unfortunately, the only eye specialist that we had left for the Ashanti Region. We pleaded but we couldn’t maintain him. So specialist care at the regional level is a bit problematic.”
Peter Ayamga, the Upper East Regional Chairman of the Ghana Physician Assistant Association (GPAA) also speaking on the show disclosed that the entire region has only 156 Physician Assistants for both private and public health facilities.
“Unfortunately as he mentioned, many of the health centres do not have Physician Assistants (PAs) or many of the facilities in the sub-districts do not have PAs. The reason which they are not health centres is because for a facility to be a health centre you need a Physician Assistant to be there as the practitioner in charge and unfortunately we do not have them. I think the whole region we 156 across all the sectors.”
He added that per the gap analysis, a health centre is supposed to have at least four Physician Assistants.
Meanwhile, speaking on the same platform, the Regional Secretary of the Coalition of NGOs in Health in the Upper East Region has sent a caution to political actors to stop interfering in health matters in the region.
The act, he says, has affected quality healthcare delivery in the region for far too long.
According to him, politicians call on health directors to ask for transfers for certain health professionals posing grave risks to residents in the region.
Source: A1radioonline.com|101.1MHz|Osuman Kaapore Tahiru|Ghana
