The Greater Accra Regional Coordinating Council (GA/ RCC) has awarded 5,904 health care frontline workers for their contributions to the region’s fight against the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
The awardees include contact tracers, drivers, researchers, disease control and surveillance teams, laboratory technicians, nurses, doctors, pharmacists, buriers, among others, from various health and other institutions which were mandated to lead the fight.
At a presentation ceremony in Accra yesterday, the Greater Accra Regional Minister, Henry Quartey, commended the workers for their dedication and commitment which ensured the success of measures that had been put in place to curtail the spread of the disease.
They were presented with certificates signed by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.
He said the awards aimed at recognising and honouring the workers for their efforts during the pandemic, and serve as motivation to other health care workers and those in other sectors that their hard work was appreciated.
Although the COVID-19 period was astounding and burdensome, he said, the frontline workers demonstrated selflessness and love for humanity by availing themselves to work in difficult circumstances.
Recounting the region’s COVID-19 experience, he noted the region became the epicentre of the pandemic in the country after recording more than 50 per cent of all recorded cases.
This, Mr Quartey said, resulted in undue pressure on health facilities and personnel, which led to workers working overtime and beyond their limits to ensure the fight against the pandemic was brought under control.
The Regional Minister lauded health workers and other Ghanaians for their ingenuity, creativity and entrepreneurial capacity which supported government’s interventions to prevent the spread of the disease.
“The period saw the invention and reinvention of tools, materials, processes to support the fight. It also showed how together we are able to achieve plenty. Our facilities were tested, our personnel were tested and our nation was tested, but we showed tenacity and resilience.
At our worst, when some of the suburbs of Accra were locked down, notwithstanding the usual Ghanaian nature of flouting every rule, we survived the hit, and men and women of the health profession were all out ensuring we overcame the pandemic,” Mr Quartey added.
He expressed gratitude to health professionals who contracted the virus and those who lost their lives through the line of duty and service to the nation, saying they would be remembered forever.
“Through your hard work and dedication, and the commitment of government, Ghana was among the first nations that received lots of commendations for the measures put in place to contain the virus.”
Director-General of Ghana Health Service (GHS), Dr Patrick Kuma-Aboagye, said the Service was working with other agencies to put in place strategies to prepare the country for such outbreaks.
Chairman of the Greater Accra Regional Directors of Health, Rev. Dr Ebenezer Asiamah, expressed gratitude to the government for the recognition and acknowledgment.
He, however, decried the absence of an insurance policy for health workers, saying the situation was a disincentive to health workers who were exposed to various risks while providing services.
He, therefore, called on the government to consider health workers in the development of national policies, and create the environment for health workers to voluntarily move to rural areas to offer their service.
BY CLAUDE NYARKO ADAMS