The poor economic management of the previous National Democratic Congress (NDC) administration resulted in their inability to employ thousands of nurses and other trained health workers for years, Dr Bernard Okoe Boye, a Deputy Minister of Health, has said.
Unlike the Mahama administration, he said, the Akufo-Addo-led government has given clearance to about 93,000 nurses and health workers for employment into the public sector, most of whom have been employed.
He said on The Key Points programme on TV3 Saturday, October 10 that the current administration is determined to close the nurses or doctor-to-patient ratio, hence the decision to employ these professionals to start work.
“We have talked about the ratio of health worker to patient improving. We are going to do that by giving employment to our trained nurses, doctors, laboratories scientists,” he told host Abena Tabi.
He added: “We had nurses who sat home for average four years, those who trained from 2012, most of them were at home because government then as a result of the poor economic management could not sustain their employment in the public sector.
“We have given clearance to over 93,000 health workers. As we speak every nurse who has finished quotation is either absorbed into government sector or is in the Heal Ghana Module of the Nation’s Builders Corp.”
Speaking on the same programme, Dr Edward Omane Boamah, who served as Minister of Communications in the previous government referenced, said the NDC is credited with massive infrastructure and other policies in the health sector.
He said, if the NDC wins this year’s elections to form the next government, it will introduce a policy dubbed the Free Primary HealthCare Plan to assist Ghanaians access primary healthcare without a cost.
Dr Omane Boamah explained that the NDC has the track record of delivering good programmes for the health sector as well as infrastructural development.
He said the previous Mahama administration built several hospitals and started new ones which were not completed before the party lost power.
The current administration, he noted, has abandoned all these uncompleted projects.
In the Eastern Region, for instance, he said, “when you go to Abetifi they have not continued with it” in a manner they would have delivered health for the people.
He added: “You take the records of health infrastructure and you say yes, the NDC delivered massively.
“We expanded the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) to admit many but I will be the first to admit that the NHIS is insufficient to deliver a health for all that we are all seeking to achieve nine years from now.”
