The Worsening Doctor-Patient Ratio …

 
Generally, doctors are over worked worldwide.
However, while in almost all other countries the work load on doctors has been reducing with time, in Ghana the indications are that the reverse is the case.

The World Health Organisation initially set the standard Doctor-Patient Ratio at1:5,000 – that is one doctor for every 5,000 patients. Ghana, at that time, was believed to have 1:13,000 patients.

The WHO standard has been revised down progressively, and is currently about 1:600, which ratio Malaysia is hoping to achieve by 2015, in view of measures and programmes she has put in place for doctor education.

In 2006, according to a comparative analysis of doctor-patient ratios for African countries by afripaedia.com, Ghana ranked 23 rd with 15 doctors per 100,000 patients. That works out at one doctor for 6,666 patients.

But in 2008, going by figures released by the Upper East Regional Director of Health, the doctor-patient ratio in that region was 1:29,000, while the Upper West was 1:44,000, and the Northern Region 1:93,000.

Had the University of Ghana Medical School remained the only medical school in the country, The Chronicle would have understood the basis for the deterioration in our doctor-patient ratio.   But we now have medical schools at KNUST, Cape Coast and UDS, so why the decline generally, and the deplorable state of affairs in the North?

The brain drain, in which our medical doctors seek greener pastures abroad, has been cited as one reason. Another is the refusal of most doctors to accept posting to the rural areas generally, and the northern regions in particular.

It does not appear that these reasons are going to abate any time soon. So are we going to fold our hands and bemoan our fate while we sheepishly call ourselves a middle income country, when we do not meet the minimum requirements for such? The United States has a doctor-patient ratio of about 390 or thereabouts.

It calls for thinking in and outside box for our so-called political leaders who are suck our resources dry and have nothing to show for the jamboree they are enjoying. The late Professor Atta Mills government's showed some mettle in that direction, when it dispatched 250 students to be trained as doctors in Cuba, but bonded them to be stationed in their regions and district assemblies of their origin on their return.

It is towards that end that The Chronicle supports the call by the Ghana Medical Association on the government to grant under graduate medical students full scholarships or grants to make medical education affordable by all brilliant students, and not only those whose parents are wealthy, as the current trend indicates.

We would add that working in the rural areas for at least five years be a pre-condition for such full medical scholarships. If necessary, admission into medical schools be segmented into regional quotas for the purposes of the bonding.

We recall the recent call by one of the Vice-Chancellors for science students with aggregate 14 or better from their best six subjects to be admitted into our engineering and medical schools. Last academic year, science students with aggregate eight from six best subjects were rejected by the four medical schools in the country. They took only students with aggregate eight from eight subjects. The same wastage of fine talent has happened this year, all because of lack of space, arising out of lack of foresight by our leaders, past and present.

This is the height of irresponsibility in a country where there is an acute shortage of 45,300 medical doctors, according to Professor Frimpong Boateng, heart specialist and former Chief Executive Officer of the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital at the 5 th Congregation of the Garden City University College last month.

We should, like Malaysia, have a clearly defined target year for foe achieving the WHO's standard doctor-patient ratio. It would be a good measure of our humanity as Ghanaians.