Okyenhene Osagyefo Amoatia Ofori-Panin has expressed concern over the rate of medical brain drain in Ghana.
Speaking at the 2023 Retreat for the Medical Suprintendent Group in the Eastern Region under the Theme: Enhancing Hospital Management Systems for Improved Health Care delivery; the Okyenhene opined that, the phenomenon of medical personnel leaving the shores of Ghana in search of greener pastures on a daily basis have a devastating consequences on the nation's health system.
Osagyefo Amoatia Ofori Panin hinted that in 2019, Ghana had about 3,236 medical doctors attending to a population of about 30 million, making the doctor - patient ratio far below any acceptable standards.
He said a 2015 study showed that the number of African-trained international medical graduates practising in the US alone reached a staggering 13,584 equivalent to about one African-educated physician migrating to the US per day over the last decade.
He said that the studies further showed that 86% of all African-educated physicians working in the US were trained in Ghana, Egypt, Nigeria, and South Africa.
"The sad aspect of this is that the beneficiary destination countries do not pay for the cost of training of African doctors they recruit. One in ten doctors working in the UK comes from Africa. This means that the UK saves an average of 2.7 billion dollars on training costs. This is a big loss to our country," Osagyefo Amoatia said.
He believes that the future of Africa’s youth does not lie in migration to Europe or America.
He said that currently, Ghana has a ratio of 9 doctors to 100,000 patients.
The Okyenhene acknowledged that medicine has a tradition of international collaboration with doctors moving around the globe to gain further training and different clinical experiences.
However, he believes that what is happening with our medical personnel is not collaboration. It is a gradual march towards humanitarian disaster.
"The US employs half of English speaking doctors in the world. It wants more. By deadly coincidence, the US wants to employ one million more healthcare workers in the next 15 years – exactly the extra number needed for sub-Saharan Africa in line with the sustainable development goals Osagyefo mentioned."
He is sadden that the heart of this problem is an unending issue of remuneration.
Lifestyle Related Deaths
Okyenhene Osagyefo Amoatia Ofori-Panin described as alarming, the lifestyle related deaths in Africa.
He observed that, just as our continent was getting a respite from communicable diseases such as Malaria, HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Polio, we are now confronted with an alarming increase in lifestyle diseases.
"Today, long considered diseases of the West such as diabetes, cancer, heart and respiratory diseases, often associated with the urban and affluent in society have crept silently into many corners in Africa. It has remained relatively unnoticed as our government focuses its attention in fighting malaria, HIV AIDs, etc".
He said that unhealthy diets, tobacco, excess alcohol and physical inactivity are major causes of these diseases.
'These diseases now account for 70% of all deaths in the world. Our continent sits on a time bomb as it is estimated that within the next decade we would have the world’s largest increase in deaths from these lifestyle diseases ' Kyenhene reveals
The situation, according to him, poses a serious threat to our national economy as it impedes efforts to fight poverty and achieve the sustainable development goals. The already overstretched health system would be unable to contain it.
Despite the difficulties, Osagyefo Amoatia Ofori-Panin believes that the government continues to invest huge resources to public health.
He said the recent establishment of the National Vaccine Institute, the Agenda 111 which aims to build a hospital in every district of the country, the four medical drone centers established to distribute blood and medicines in various parts of the country, the Free Specialist Post Graduate Medical Training, the over 300 Ambulances is evidence of government’s commitment to provide quality and accessible health care to our people.
Source: Peacefmonline.com
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This is serious. I doubt whether there is anything any government can do to curb if not eliminate completely the migration of Ghana's health professionals to seek greener pastures outside. Fact is that government may not be able to pay them same as they are paid elsewhere. However the major challenge has to do with the lifestyle of our political leadership and public perfception about them. When citizens of a country see their leaders making sacrifices, they will be ready to sacrifice too. However when they see their leaders enjoying from their sweat especially people who are not academically/professionally qualified more than you, the only alternative left is to seek for better conditions elsewhere. Who doesn't want to live a good life? We are aware that no medical doctor is/was trained to come and sit in an office to administer a region/district as regional/district director of health services. A medical doctor is found in 3 places i.e. Patients ward, consulting room or the theatre. We have seen medical doctors who have gone to read PUBLIC HEALTH to enable them sit in offices as regional/district director of health services because of the goodies in there when their services are most needed in the hospitals. What then is the work of Health Services administrators? Are these category of medial doctors added when we are talking of the doctor-patient ratio in Ghana when they have no direct contact with patients? How can you have a whole district with one or two a medical doctors manning their health facility and yet there is a medical doctor sitting in an office in the same district as the district director of health services, how? What the Okyenhene said is very true but it will not travel beyond the room where he made those statements. Ghana's problems are just too many and complicated even though God has given us all we need to live comfortably.
What would have been the root causes of the medical brain drain in Ghana.? Dr. Kwame Nkrumahs political philosophy was to promote and enhance the traditional health medicines in Ghana and Africa as whole. The development was to reintergration of Orthodox health medicines with that of the traditional health practices. With the increasing global movement of scientific medical technology, many african countries competed with and will want to reach the standard of health systems of the developed countries. Hence many African countries including Ghana abandoned the researching and promoting the traditional methods of health practices. Its the political will of Ghanas government and ghanas health ministry to start talking about the advantages of engaging ghanas medical students "to research more on traditional medicines" Medical Schools in Ghana must take advantage of Ghanas "God given Natural" resorces to do more studies and promote thier knowledge to tackle the many strange dieseas, such as cancer, diabetes and heart troubles dieseas in Ghana. The global medical researchers association should have interest of researching into the traditional health sysytems in Africa and promotes methods of applying those fruitful results to tackle the modern dieseases in Ghana.