Govt plans to decentralise medical education — Haruna Iddrisu

Minister for Education, Haruna Iddrisu, has announced plans by the government to decentralise and expand medical education across the country as part of efforts to increase the number of trained doctors.

Speaking at the commissioning of a 200-bed hostel at Wisconsin International University College (WIUC) in Feyiase, the minister said the proposed reforms would be modelled on recent changes to legal education aimed at widening access to professional training.

According to Mr Iddrisu, the government is committed to removing barriers to entry into highly competitive professional programmes to help address the country's healthcare needs.

He said the expansion of medical education would follow the same approach adopted in the legal sector, where reforms have increased access for qualified applicants.

The minister noted that the government's legal education reforms were intended to make legal training more accessible and said a similar policy direction would soon be introduced for medical education.

He observed that both legal and medical training had historically been limited to relatively small numbers of students, but argued that the country needs to produce more doctors to strengthen healthcare delivery.

Mr Iddrisu said expanding medical education would enable Ghana to deploy more doctors across all regions, in the same way nurses are currently distributed nationwide.