The Vice President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, has commended medical practitioners for their tireless work in providing quality health care for Ghanaians.
According to him, healthcare practitioners work day and night to ensure that the health needs of the citizenry are met.
He however expressed worried about the increasing numbers of complaints about allegations of clinical negligence, poor professional attitude and conduct, inhumane and degrading treatment of patients and some practitioners who provide services outside their areas of competency of their training.
Dr Bawumia said this yesterday during 50th anniversary celebrations of the establishment of the Medical and Dental Council (MDC) themed, “Medical Training & Practice in Ghana: The Past, Present and Future.”
The three-day conference seeks to bring stakeholders together for thorough reflective discussions on some of the key areas of concern, reach consensus on most of the critical issues and proffer actionable solutions to guide future regulation of medicine and dentistry in Ghana.
Dr Bawumia said there were concerns about significant numbers of health care professionals who abuse substances or work under the influence of substances including chronic alcoholism or suffer from infirmities of the mind which bothered on their fitness to practice.”
“Yet the experience from the Medical and Dental Council, Ghana, shows that majority of these professionals had challenges during their undergraduate training and that early identification of impairment and intervention are associated with better outcomes,” he said.
The Vice President praised the MDC for being proactive in these matters as I understand the provision of some Policy Documents on Specialist Register; Practitioners Stamp, Name Tag and Appropriate Professional Apparel as well as Scope of Practice for Physicians to address some of these issues of concern.
He said government is improving on the efficiency of the operations of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) which has allowed the NHIS to expand the scope of its services to include childhood cancers thereby removing lack of money as a critical barrier to lifesaving healthcare services.
He said the government through the Ministry of Health in June 2020 approved a proposal to the World Bank (Ghana Office) for Regulatory Health System Strengthening Support for Quality Assurance of Health Care.
The said $15m has been earmarkedto support investment in medical professional regulations, among others.
The Registrar, MDC, Dr Divine N. Banyubala, said the MDC over the past years had witnessed good progress in critical regulatory areas in relation to standard setting, training, regulation and policy support for the health sector generally.
He said the success had been achieved due to some measures and initiatives or policies put in place by successive Board and Members of the Council.
“Despite these achievements by the Council, it still faced challenges in its quest to match up with the current advancement in medicine, technology and science.”
