<<Print>>Doctors within the Ghana Medical Association are holding the line to resign en masse after Friday 14 August 2015 if demands for their conditions of service are not sorted out soon.
If they carry out their threat, at least 2,000 doctors will leave the public service, an unprecedented move following years of working without a concrete set of conditions of service.
Fearing the worst, government has announced bold plans to recruit retired Medical Doctors to replace striking members of the Ghana Medical Association pending the outcome of negotiation.
The Health Minister, Alex Segbefia came face to face with the pain and anguish faced by patients across the country because of the strike by doctors which is now taking an agonizing toll.
Already, one woman died Monday morning at a private clinic after she could not find any doctor at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital to attend to her.
Mr. Segbefia has been touring some selected health facilities today to get a first-hand appreciation of the crisis.
He once again appealed to doctors to return to work.
“We are doing everything possible to get the doctors back….for now I am appealing, there are many options, [but] I am humbly appealing to the doctors…This is actually not the way forward”.
He said their dissatisfaction with the current conditions at work “doesn’t kill anybody” but the strike can kill.
Clergy, the largest opposition party New Patriotic Party (NPP), the National Peace Council and traditional rulers have all begged the doctors to return but short of an agreement with government, the doctors say there is no turning back.
Deputy General Secretary of the Ghana Medical Association Dr. Justice Yankson has stressed that a doctor's commitment to the Hippocratic Oath is not a commitment to wallow in poverty.
With negotiations over conditions of service for doctors still in limbo JOY NEWS is learning of a countrywide resolve by Doctors to further escalate their action by Friday, the 14th of August.
The Upper West regional chapter of GMA in a press statement have thrown their weight behind the road map that could eventually see the doctors off government payroll in barely 7 days time.