Create attractive incentives for health personnel in rural areas – Health Director
Dr John Koku Awoonor-Williams, Upper East Regional Director of Health Services, has called for attractive incentives and a retention strategy to enable health professionals stay and work in rural areas.
Dr Awoonor said a well thought out placement policy would attract and improve health delivery and reduce brain drain in the health sector.
He said this when he delivered an address during a mid year review of staff of the directorate in Bolgatanga.
He said no doctor had been posted to the region this year saying “the present situation where the only advantage for staff working in deprived northern regions receive only one year promotion could not be enough attraction to doctors, and specialists”.
He said more was needed to augment the situation and said the presence of a medical school in the Northern Region was not automatic that it would improve the doctor situation in the three northern regions.
Dr Awoonor said the Upper East Region’s policy that ensured no mother died at a health facility was in earnest and that community and enrolled nurses were constantly at post at Community Health Preventive Service (CHPS) compounds and health centres to work.
He said the regional policy helped to retain staff in the region including three minimum bond years for nurses and midwives after their training from the health training schools in the area.
He entreated District and Municipal Assemblies in the region to sponsor medical students from the region to complement the efforts of the Health Directorate.
Source: GNA