The Health Minister, Kweku Agyemang-Manu has suggested that Ghana appeared to be overproducing nurses.
According to him, “from the look of things, the country is reaching a point where it is having more than enough nurses.”
He said although the country’s one nurse to 839 population ratio exceeds the World Health Organisation’s recommended nurse to population ratio of one to 1000 population, it still continued to produce nurses as the 85 nursing and midwifery training institutions graduate an average of 14,000 nurses annually.
The Minister who was speaking in the Volta Region during a three-day tour indicated that the region’s one nurse to 664 populations and one midwife to 700 populations as recorded in 2018 was a clear indication that the country was doing well as far as nurse and midwife training was concerned.
He however said the challenge however was the uneven distribution of nurses and midwives across the region and the country, especially in rural, deprived and hard to reach communities.
“And so, although it appears we have enough nurses, they are all centred in the urban areas”, he lamented.
This he attributed to the undue interference by political leaders, opinion leaders, traditional leaders, relatives of key personnel among others who succumb to the requests of health professionals who refuse postings to underserved areas.
From Fred Duodu, Ho (k.duodu@yahoo.com)