Koforidua, July 29, GNA- The Ghana Health Service (GHS) is to re-introduce the programme for the training of enrolled nurses, which was stopped in the country in 1985. The Service is also to introduce a three-year training programme for medical assistants, who would be selected from senior secondary school graduates. These programmes are to help solve the high attrition rate, which is facing the human resource base in the health sector.

This was disclosed by the Director of the Human Resource Division of GHS, Dr Ken Sagoe at the graduation ceremony of the first batch of 106 health assistants in the Eastern Region at Koforidua on Thursday. He explained that, medical assistants would be expected to man health centres that do not have doctors and also assist in health institutions, where the services of medical doctors were available. Dr Sagoe called on district assemblies to sponsor personnel from their districts to the various training programmes that would be introduced to enable them recruit and maintain sufficient health personnel.

In a speech read on behalf of the Eastern Regional Minister, Mr Yaw Barimah, he called on district assemblies, non-governmental organisations and the private sector to assist in the provision of the health needs of the people. He explained that such developments were to enable the health centres to meet the health requirements of the people that might increase after the full implementation of National Health Insurance Scheme.

The Eastern Regional Director of Health Services, Dr Ebenezer Appiah-Denkyirah called for the regionalisation of the selection of students for nursing training colleges, so that 60 per cent of them would be chosen from the region, where a nursing training college is situated. He explained that such a measure was necessary to enable the regions to attract sufficient nurses because many of the trained nurses from the metropolitan areas often do not accept posting to the rural areas.

Dr Appiah-Denkyirah said the region was working towards the introduction of fee-paying-day nursing training colleges. He said under such programme, trainee nurses in their final year, would be introduced to the districts, where their would be working after graduation. Dr Appiah-Denkyirah noted that often when students on attachments were nicely treated, they often prefer to go back to the place to work after graduation.