Commentary on need for guidelines in respect to medical outreach

Donations of drugs, non-drug consumables and equipment to the health sector and occasional Voluntary Medical Outreach Programmes continue to play significant role in our quest to enhance healthcare delivery, especially in deprived communities.

In spite of the important role these donations play towards health delivery, there are instances where expired drugs and obsolete equipment have been donated to some health institutions. There are also problems of delayed clearance of donated items from the port owing to lack of coordination between the donors and beneficiary institutions.

It has, however, been observed that owing to the absence of guidelines to streamline such donations and voluntary medical outreach programmes, there have been instances where these philanthropic gestures are done without adequate needs-assessment on the beneficiary facilities or communities.

To address these problems, the Ministry of Health set up a multi-sectorial task force in 2007 to develop a comprehensive set of guidelines that would be endorsed and used by individuals and organizations desirous of donating drugs and medical equipment to any health facility in the country.

The Task Force was to be guided by existing guidelines prepared by the WHO Action Programme on essential drugs and further refined in close collaboration with the Division of Drugs Management and Policies, the Division of Emergency and Humanitarian Action, major international relief organizations and a number for international experts.

The final text represented the consensus between WHO, Churches' Action for Health of the World Council of Churches, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Medicines Sans Frontiers, the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, OXFAM and the United Nation's Children's Fund.

These internationally accepted guidelines formed the basis for the Ghanaian guidelines in a booklet entitled “Guidelines for Donations and Voluntary Medical Outreach Programmes in the Health Sector of Ghana” which was printed and distributed to all Regional and District Directorates of Health Services as well as District, Municipal and Metropolitan Assemblies throughout the country to ensure that the basic rules for appropriate donations and voluntary medical outreach programmes are applied.

Indeed the guidelines are binding regulations for all involved in donations and voluntary medical outreach programmes.

The Ministry of Health has plans to develop a register of all Ghanaian, and non-Ghanaian medical doctors resident in the United States of America and in Europe who would like to work in Ghana, to enable the Ministry to facilitate their entry and operations when the time comes.

With this, the Ministry and voluntary medical personnel will agree on a schedule of visits to the country, time and locations so that every requirement that they may need to satisfy the Medical and Dental Council of Ghana will be done before their arrival in the country.

In addition, the Ministry will establish a Foreign Voluntary Medical Service Department to manage all voluntary medical programmes for the benefit of all.

There are about twenty health professional from the United States expected to undertake voluntary medical outreach programmes at the Ridge Hospital where they have already established partnership for years. The team continues its collaborative effort the Sunyani Regional Hospital for two weeks.

The immediate past Health Minister, Dr. Sipa Yankey visited the United Kingdom to meet Ghanaian Medical Doctors and Dentists as well as other health professional to develop and concretize existing relationships to enable them to continue to offer voluntary medical services to the people of Ghana.

It is everybody's hope that these initiatives of the Ministry of Health and the Ghana Health Service will yield the desired results to ensure the health and safety of Ghanaians.

BY DAN OSMAN MWIN, MINISTRY OF HEALTH.