Engage Us To Man SHS Sick Bays

Principals of private accredited health training institutions have appealed to the government to consider recruiting their products to manage sick bays/health post in senior high schools (SHS) across the country.

Mrs. Agnes Eyiah-Mensah, their spokesperson, said this would help to significantly improve healthcare in the schools.

It would allow for efficient administration of first aid, management of ordinary health conditions and case referrals to the hospitals.

The appeal comes against the background of separate outbreak of meningitis and swine flu at the Kumasi Academy SHS that claimed the lives of some students.

Mrs. Eyiah-Mensah, who is the Principal of Dutiful Hands Improvement College of Health and Education, said that would ease the pressure on doctors and nurses as they would no longer have to leave the facilities to attend to students in their schools.

She added that recruiting trained professionals from the privately run institutions could be done under the health module of Youth Employment Agency (YEA).

That would even save cost because the government would not have to spend huge sums of money on training.

She said the arrangement would end the growing anxiety and frustration over the announcement by the Health Ministry (MOH) that the government was not going to be obliged to hire graduates from the private institutions, despite having given them the accreditation to train students.

Mrs. Eyiah-Mensah faulted the MOH for creating a wave of confusion with the announcement and said it had created a difficulty - disincentive to students to enroll in the private institutions.

She said it was unacceptable for anybody to be denied the opportunity to work in a public institution, simply because they trained in a private school.

The private institutions, she noted, had been playing significant role in the training of the manpower to drive the nation's development and said that should be recognized by everybody.

GNA
By Florence Afriyie Mensah, GNA