Koforidua, Oct. 25, GNA - Professor Agyeman Badu Akosa, the Director General of the Ghana Health Service, said on Tuesday that he would retire voluntarily at the end of the year.

Prof Akosa, the 52-year old pathologist, said he would return to the lecture hall next year.

He made the announcement at the opening of the Third National Conference of the General Nurses Group at Koforidua. Prof Akosa urged the members of the General Nurses Group to demand from their medical superintendents and matrons equipment they needed to work with.

He said most of the equipment could be provided from the internally generated funds of the health facilities where they work. "It does not need the intervention of the Director General for some obsolete equipment at the health facilities to be changed." Nana Oyetia 1, the Director of Nursing Services, called for priority to be given to the retention of health professionals especially nurses because the quality of health care was linked with the number of health personnel, their mix and competence.

She said salary top ups could be difficult in the face of resource constrains but not impossible.

"If the system can be streamlined to curtail wastages and the government to do a little more to increase the quantum of money in the salary scale, the benefits to health workers can be far reaching."

Nana Oyetia said Ghana could not pay salaries comparable to those pertaining in the USA and the UK and appealed to health workers to show some level of patriotism.

She urged nurses to show evidence that when their conditions of service were improved there would be corresponding improvement in their performance.

Dr Gladys Ashitey, the Deputy Minister of Health, said clinical nurses needed to be abreast of global changes in nursing and be conversant with the handling of modern medical equipments for quality health care to be a reality, Mr Yaw Barimah, the Eastern Regional Minister, appealed to nurses, in a speech read on his behalf, to do all that they could to correct public perception that they were unfriendly.