Graduate students swearing an oath
In ensuring patient safety, quality of care and regulatory compliance, the Allied Health Professionals Council (AHPC) Ghana, has said it has tightened its measures to clamp down on the recent surge of quack practitioners in the health sector.
This measure, according to the council, has become relevant because the healthcare delivery system requires a well-designed and organised monitoring and inspection system, in upholding the highest healthcare standards, hence, the strengthened measures to sanitise the sector.
Speaking at the induction and oath swearing ceremony for newly qualified allied health graduates of the Allied Health Professionals Council (AHPC) in Accra, Acting Registrar, Daniel Atta-Nyarko said the council, with support from experts, Federation of Allied Health Professionals, embarked on a quack-elimination mission to promote safety in the healthcare delivery service.
He made an assurance that the exercise, piloted in the Greater Accra region, will be duplicated in other regions in the coming days, adding that its monitoring officers have visited over 40 public and private health facilities.
“The process involved checking on the status of professionals, i.e. to know if they are in good standing or not, inspecting facilities and equipments used in laboratories for efficacy, and then sensitising managers of these facilities on the dangers of employing quacks,” he said.
Mr. Atta-Nyarko also appealed to the court to expedite the processes for prosecuting persons caught practicing without licenses to serve as a deterrent for others. Addressing the issue of health practitioners traveling overseas in search of greener pastures at the detriment of the country’s health sector, he highlighted that the phenomenon has seen some increment due to inadequate salaries and poor condition of services.
“To curb what is slowly becoming any growing economy’s nightmare, I believe that a comprehensive, multi-stakeholder approach is needed to address the complex issue of the departure of allied health professionals in order to establish a healthcare system that would attract and maintain qualified professionals in Ghana,” he said.
Chairman, Prof. Augustine Kwame Kyere, on his part, entreated the graduating students to uphold the highest standard of healthcare practice to its citizenry.
He also urged them to report persons who do not conform to the standard of practice as enshrined in the Allied Health Professions Council Act of Parliament (Act 857, 2013).
The induction ceremony which witnessed over 2,800 graduates who studied various disciplines such as MSC Audiology, MPHIL Medical Physics, Doctor of Aerometry, Doctor of Laboratory Science, MSC Dietetics among others, was under the theme, ‘Eliminating Quacks to Promote Quality Healthcare in Achieving Universal Health Coverage – The role of Allied Health Professionals’.
BY Prince Fiifi Yorke