Nurses and Midwives account for 50% of global health workforce
Dr Owen Kaluwa, the WHO Representative to Ghana, has said that Nurses and midwives account for more than 50 per cent of the global health workforce, providing crucial health services at all levels.
He said despite that, there was a shortage of nurses and midwives, particularly in Africa and South East Asia, adding that, for all countries to reach Sustainable Development Goal 3 on health and well-being, WHO estimated that the world would need an additional nine million nurses and midwives by 2030.
He said other challenges on the continent were insufficient high-quality nursing and midwifery education programmes, and limited access to socially acceptable and affordable information and communication technologies.
Dr Kaluwa was speaking at the 3rd Annual General Meeting (AGM) and Seminar of the Ghana College of Nurses and Midwives (GCNM) at Gomoa Fetteh, near Kasoa, on the theme “Evidence-based Specialist Nursing and Midwifery Practice: Accelerating Effective Leadership for Universal Health Coverage.
The first batch of 28 residents who have successfully completed the three-year programme, graduated alongside the second batch of 87 Paediatric Associate residents.
Eighty-three residents and 112 Associate residents, who were admitted for the 2018/2019 also matriculated.
He said Nursing and midwifery services needed to be strengthened by ensuring good educational standards and translating cutting-edge evidence based research into people-centred practice.
“The four domains of effective universal health coverage, namely, availability, accessibility, acceptability and quality of health services, had implications for research, education and evidence-based practice and must be considered when planning nursing and midwifery programmes.
“Access to information on research evidence should be prioritised and scaled up to build the capacity of the nursing and midwifery health workforce and to ensure the delivery of quality people-centred services for Universal Health Coverage (UHC),” he said.
Dr Kaluwa said moving towards the attainment of UHC required strengthening of Health Systems across all its component building blocks, including health financing for UHC; essential medicines, health products and technologies; health system governance; health statistics and information system; service delivery and safety, and health workforce.
He said the Nursing Now campaign was a three-year effort (2018-2020) to improve health globally by raising the status of nursing and enabling nurses to maximise their contribution to achieving UHC and appealed to all nurses and midwives to remain committed and dedicated to their work and always put the patient first.
Dr Jemima Araba Dennis-Antwi, the President of GCNM, said as a professional specialist College, their mission was four pronged – promote specialist education, Continual Profession Development, establish postgraduate nursing and midwifery education, and contribute to the formulation of policies.
She said in 2013-2014, tremendous efforts were put into setting the milestones for the initiation of eight academic programmes that started in 2015.
The programmes are Emergency, Oncology, Palliative Care, Neuroscience, Paediatric, Haematology, Neonatal Intensive Care, and Women’s Health.
“Last year, 2017, the Academic Board initiated our first mental health programme in Addiction Nursing,” she added.
Dr Dennis-Antwi announced that the Board was working to introduce two more programmes, namely, Child and Adolescent Mental Health Nursing and Nephrology Nursing and expressed the hope that these programmes would start next year to ease the burden of getting qualified professionals to manage the increasing number of nephrology patients nationally.
Ms Hannah Akua Oparebea Acquah, the Rector, GCNM, said the “College has been doing very well, growing in numbers and currently has a total of 298 Associate and Residents, pursuing various programmes and living up to its responsibilities and commitments to its core mandate.”
At the end of the two-day AGM and Seminar, the College will elect a new President in accordance with its Constitution.
Source: GNA