Kintampo College of Health to become university College
Government would next year officially declare the College of Health and Well-Being-Kintampo (CoHK), an affiliate institution of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Mr. Alban Sumani Bagbin, Minister of Health, said on Friday.
He said government would therefore expand the infrastructural base of the would- be University College to enable it host the expected increase in the number of departments, lecturers and students.
Mr. Bagbin, who was addressing the 43rd anniversary celebration and fifth congregation of the College at Kintampo in the Brong-Ahafo Region, said the upgrading would help in the scaling up of health education in the country.
It was on the theme: “43 years of training mid-level health professionals; the successes, challenges and prospects”.
Mr. Bagbin acknowledged the problem of job placement and distribution of middle level manpower in the health sector, a situation that affected products of the College on the field.
Mr. Bagbin therefore announced the coming into being of a consultative body to seek solutions to such problems.
Professor William Otoo Ellis, Vice-Chancellor of KNUST, stated that the expansion of educational opportunities was a keystone to the nation’s accelerated socio-economic development.
According to him, education provided a fundamental base for all human development, saying its availability and quality were therefore central to the human resource development of any society.
Prof. Ellis said it was therefore important that every nation took the issue of health education more serious because it positively influenced health behaviour of citizens and communities.
Dr. Emmanuel Tei Adjase, Director of (CoHK), recalled the history of the College, disclosing that from one programme in 1969 through to four to five in the 1980s, it was now running 20 basic, post-basic/undergraduate programmes of study.
He said the areas included Community Medicine, Dentistry and Health, Medical Laboratory Science, Health Information Management, Health Promotion, Community Nutrition, Applied Epidemiology, Community Mental Health and Clinical Psychiatry.
Dr. Adjase said some of the programmes that were at diploma and degree levels provided academic career progression pathways for mid-level health professionals in clinical and preventive health.
Mr. Eric Opoku, Deputy Brong-Ahafo Regional Minister, described as “unfortunate” the refusal of some health personnel trained with the tax-payers money to accept postings to the rural communities where their services were mostly required.
He expressed optimism that the newly qualified health workers would exhibit professional commitment to work in rural areas where about 60 per cent of the country’s population resided, emphasizing that most of the deprived communities even had no personnel to attend to their health needs.
Graduating classes of 2010, 2011 and 2012 were awarded with certificates, diplomats and degrees after having fulfilled the academic requirements of the institution.
The degree recipients comprised a batch of five in Medical Assistant Psychiatry, a one year top-up for Medical Assistants. They formed the pioneering degree class of the institution.
Source: GNA