Dr. Abdulai Abukari
The Northern Regional Director of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), Dr. Abdulai Abukari, has appealed to stakeholders and the public to limit their interference in the postings and transfers of health staff to ensure equity as they work towards achieving Universal Health Coverage (UHC).
“We need to remember that the Northern Region include other 10 districts located along the Eastern corridor in addition to the Tamale Metro, Sagnarigu Municipal as well as the other 4 districts in the western enclave of the region. I am also using this forum to make a passionate appeal to medical doctors and other critical staff who are natives of the Northern Region to accept postings to any part of the region as part of their social responsibilities to their mother region,” he said.
The Director was speaking at the regional Health Directorate’s 2023 Annual Performance Review Meeting on the theme, “Sustaining Essential Health Service Delivery Towards Achieving Universal Health Coverage: The Role of Stakeholders is Resource Mobilization”.
He disclosed that the region as at the end of 2023 had 335 medical doctors with 275 (82%) at the Tamale Teaching Hospital adding that they had 50 medical doctors within the GHS facilities which is an improvement from 30 medical doctors as at the beginning of the last quarter of 2023.
He again revealed that the nurse to population ratio currently stands at 1 nurse to 396.
“The right mix and equitable distribution is still a huge challenge we are trying to address. In our efforts towards attracting more medical doctors to the region we are encouraging our Municipal and District Assemblies to support in attracting medical doctors with incentives and decent accommodation facilities,” he added.
Dr. Abukari, however, lamented about the inadequate number of district hospitals in the region.
He said out of the 16 District Health Directorates in the region, it is only 6 that have a standard district health administration office complex. “The remaining 10 Districts do not have and this is a serious challenge affecting health service delivery,” he added.
He said there is an acute shortage of accommodation for key staff across all the districts and that no facility can boast of accommodation for its entire core staff.
Dr. Abukari stated that the availability of tracer medicines at the various health facilities have been affected as a result of the intermittent shortages of medicines at the Regional Medical Stores leading to irregular supply through the last mile distribution.
“In 2023, the availability of tracer medicines in our health facilities was 52.3% which is an improvement from the figure of 44.2% from in 2022. It is our hope that there will be improvement this year.”
By Eric Kombat, Tamale