Brain drain: Despite losing over 500 nurses Ghana Health Service remains well-staffed – Dr. Kuma-Aboagye
The Director-General of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), Dr. Patrick Kuma-Aboagye has assured Ghanaians that the country is well-resourced in terms of personnel to work in various health facilities.
Recent reports revealed that over 500 nurses have left their country to continue their practice abroad in search of greener pastures.
This raised some worry in the public domain as government was admonished to find a way to deal with the issue of brain drain.
At a Minister’s Press Briefing in Accra on Thursday, August 17, Dr. Patrick Kuma-Aboagye stressed that the public should be assured that healthcare delivery won’t be affected by the 525 nurses that left the country in the past year
Although he admits the Ghana Health Service has lost some experienced health professionals, he insists that others are being trained to fill in the void.
“Most importantly in the last 10 years, we have been able to recruit up to about 33,626 new staff to improve our capacity. Definitely, there is the brain drain but looking at the numbers we are not affected. We have lost experienced people, we have lost some skilled staff but we have also put in systems and we are able to replace them,” Dr. Patrick Kuma-Aboagye said.
The Director-General of the Ghana Health Service continued, “We have been able to send doctors to the rural areas and we want to take this opportunity to encourage communities to put in place measures that attract skilled staff to their districts and to their communities to offer care.”
At the press briefing, Dr. Patrick Kuma-Aboagye seized the opportunity to salute nurses and doctors who have stayed in the midst of the brain drain to serve Mother Ghana.