Medical Status Change Of Anaesthetists Draws Anger

A decision taken by the Medical and Dental Council (MDC) to change the status of Members of the Ghana Association of Certified Registered Anaesthetists to Physician Assistants (PA) has not gone down well with the Anaesthetists.

The group angered by this action are threatening a massive strike action from tomorrow Friday 31st January 2020.

The Association views the move as a “backdoor approach” to change the already existing Bachelor of Science Anaesthesia degree awarded to Certified Registered Anaesthetists.

The Association believes this is a “clear violation of the Health Professions Regulatory Bodies Act 857.”

The Association in April embarked on a partial nationwide strike over what they said was the Medical and Dental Council's attempt to change their title from Certified Registered Anesthetists to Physician Assistants.

The strike was later called off after an agreement with the Ghana Health Service.

The Association threatened another strike from July 8, 2019, due to what the President of the Association, Jacob Wumbei had called the government's failure in respecting the terms of the agreement reached.

“We want to go on a strike because we do not think it is right to take our patients for a ride and once they came that the issue was within, I would have expected that by now we would have gotten somewhere but virtually nothing. We have not heard anything. We are chasing them and looking for them. Nobody cares about what is happening,” he had said.

The Association, however, called off its nationwide partial withdrawal of services following an agreement reached with the Ghana Health Service.

---CitinewsRoom