Health professionals ponder setting standards for anaesthesia practice

Accra, Aug 31, GNA - The Ghana Anaesthesia Society on Saturday organised a symposium drawing together health professionals and interested parties to deliberate ways of developing a plan of action to direct the practice of anaesthesia in the country.

The Association's officials, the Ministry of Health, the Ghana Health Service, university lecturers and doctors discussed a wide range of issues covering certification and regulation of anaesthesia, standards for equipment, drugs, staffing, physician anaesthetic and non-physician training.

The Ghana College of Physicians and Surgeons and the Ghana Anaesthesia Society (GAS) organised the symposium on the theme: 'Standards for the practice of anaesthesia in Ghana' aimed at guaranteeing professional anaesthesia conduct to save lives.

Dr Frank Boni, President of GAS said getting a codified document on standards would help regulate the use of treatment drugs, persons who qualify to practice anaesthesia, and conditions of patients.

He said due to lack of standards there is an ongoing policy that seek to recruit senior high school graduates to be trained in anaesthesia but that was wrong and would not improve the practice of anaesthesia in the country. 'Without the correct training, without the correct drugs, with the correct staff and without correct equipment we cannot improve on anaesthesia and surgeons in the whole country will suffer, he said.

Setting standards for the profession, he said, would guide the practice of anaesthesia for safe operations and effective pain administration as well as improve theatre work and ease the work of surgeons.

He said without the proper guidelines, it would be difficult to determine the number of people who die from surgery or anaesthesia in the country, and the equipment and drugs available, arguing that a workable document would control activities in the field and save the nation a lot of money.

Government spends millions of cedis to procure expensive anaesthesia equipment every year, but the health professionals told the Ghana News Agency that most of the equipment were not in use for lack of professionals to handle them or due to poor maintenance.

'The World Health Organisation conducted a survey in 2014, it found out that Ghana has 85 per cent of drug equipment requirement, but the hospitals keep complaining there are no equipment.

Yet these equipment are lying idle in the medical stores, no one is using them -monitors, MRI [Magnetic resonance imaging] - because we don't have the personnel to use them.

Even in the developed countries before they import some of these machines they have to think through, they train the personnel before buying them,' an official who preferred anonymity said.

The workable document is expected to be finalised in two months with input from the Ministries of Justice and Attorney-General as well as Health.

GNA