Allied Health Council Clamps Down On Quack Practitioners

The Allied Health Professions Council (AHPC) Ghana has initiated steps to register qualified professionals under the Council to pave way for easy identification and elimination of quack practitioners from the system.

The move seeks to safeguard the integrity of the health profession and ensure public safety.

Officials say the initiative is necessary because the use of fake guises has become a major issue that is denting the image of the profession, hence the need for to capture and work with qualified professionals and get rid of the fake ones from the system.

Dr Samuel Yaw Opoku, Acting Registrar of the AHPC, disclosed this in an interview with the media in Wa during the national sensitization and distribution of Health Professions Regulatory Bodies Act 857, 2013 (Part One - AHPC), Health Institutions and Facilities Act 2011 (Part One) and AHPC approved Continues Professional Development (CPD) Guidelines.

'Quackery is a big issue especially in the area of medical laboratory, medical imagery and ultrasound among others', he said.

He said through the registration they would be in the position to identify the quacks and possibly initiate legal actions against them to help sanitize the system for public good.

Dr Ignatius A. N. Awinibuno, President of the Ghana Association of Medical Laboratory Scientists (GAMLS), said quackery was a threat to the image of the health profession, adding that it was the duty of the Council to ensure standards.

'The Council is relatively young and because of that a lot of evil has happened and as a professional body they are rising up and saying no to quackery', he said, prompting the council to embark on the sensitization drive for their members.

Dr Awinibuno, who is also the Deputy Chief Medical Laboratory Scientist at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital (KBTH), said the sensitization was also allow people to know that it was an offense to work without license or work in the wrong institution or employ somebody without the right qualification.

He said it was also an opportunity to explain to members plans put in place to facilitate access to services through the creation of additional centres to avoid members travelling long distances to Accra for those services.

He said if any member failed to abide by the regulations after the sensitization and the law caught up with them, the Council would not come to their aid.

Dr Awinibuno said the platform afforded the members to appreciate the need to register their facilities in order to facilitate easy regulation.

The stage, he said, was geared towards protecting the public from accessing services from quack practitioners that would put their lives at risk.

Mr Theophilus Owusu Ansah, the Deputy Director in charge of Clinical Care at the Upper West Regional Health Directorate, commended the Council for the move adding that when a profession was regulated it had a lot of advantages including improvement and recognition.

He said members they have a responsibility to put up good character that would allow their names to continue to remain in the register.

He also urged them to begin to use laid down structures of the Council to maintain standards and integrity.