The Ghana Registered Nurses and Midwives Association (GRNMA) says until conditions of service for health workers are improved in the country, brain drain in the health sector would continue.
The Executive Secretary of GRNMA, David Tenkorang, feared the situation could have dire impact on healthcare delivery if urgent steps are not taken to address it.
He was speaking in an interview in Accra yesterday following the latest decision by the UK government to blacklist healthcare and social workers from Ghana and 53 other countries.
In its revised code of practice for international recruitment of health and social care personnel published on its National Health Service (NHS) employer’s website on March 23, the UK said, the move was to promote the retention of such ‘critical’ workers in their respective countries to help achieve universal health coverage (UHC).
“The countries listed have a UHC Service Coverage Index that is lower than 50 and a density of doctors, nurses and midwives that is below the global median (48.6 per 10,000 population),” the statement by the UK government said.
Mr Tenkorang noted that although health professionals have pushed for the improvement of their conditions of service over the years, little results have been achieved leading to many leaving to seek greener pastures.
“Those who are leaving are not the ones who just completed school, they are the experienced ones, those who have ten, fifteen years to go on retirement and this is the case where for instance the government has set out to build Agenda 111 and all these hospitals will have to be populated by nurses and midwives.
If we don’t take drastic actions to stop the situation, it will certainly adversely impact healthcare delivery. There is going to be a vacuum because these are the very experienced, competent nurses and midwives who should mentor the newly recruited, and if we continue to allow them to leave the way they are leaving, then we will have problems.”
In 2021, the UK took a similar action against 46 countries of which Ghana was included.
The latest development comes at a time Ghana is experiencing high brain drain in the health sector with professionals leaving in droves to seek greener pastures.
Data from the Ghana Registered Nurses and Midwives Association (GRNMA) says over 3,000 nurses and midwives have left the country since the beginning of 2022 till date.
The Ghana Medical Association (GMA) has also reported that a number of physicians and surgeons have left the country for foreign countries.
There are fears that hospitals and health centres in the country would be hit with understaffing in the next three to five years if the trend is not reversed.
With a projected global shortage of 10 million health workers to achieve universal health coverage in low and lower-middle income countries by 2030, the WHO has charged governments to invest in hiring and resourcing health workers to achieve UHC by 2030.
Other affected blacklisted countries are Afghanistan, Angola, Bangladesh, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, The Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, Kiribati, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Lesotho and Liberia.
The rest are Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Federated States of Micronesia, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Rwanda, Samoa, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, United Republic of Tanzania, Timor-Leste, Togo, Tuvalu, Uganda, Vanuatu, Republic of Yemen, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
BY ABIGAIL ANNOH
