Koforidua, July 28, GNA - The government had released funds to support the training of 10,200 health aids by mid-2007 to boost staff of health institutions in the country to assist in giving quality health care to patients.

60 health aids for each district are to start training from the second part of this year.

The Deputy Director of Human Resources of the Ministry of Health (MOH), Ms Josphine Baffour-Awuah, disclosed this at the graduation ceremony of 69 health aids trained by the Koforidua Regional Hospital in Koforidua on Thursday.

She cautioned the graduates not to hold themselves as professional nurses, but were expected to assist the professional nurses at work.

Ms Baffour-Awuah warned that the MOH would not condone the activities of health personnel, who fell short of the code of professional ethics and etiquettes and explained that, the professional ethics and etiquettes would still be applied, even if the graduates sponsored themselves and worked with the private sector. She explained that the MOH would sponsor the training of health aids provided they were prepared to be bonded to serve in public health institutions for a period of five years and would accept to work in any part of the country.

Ms Baffour-Awuah urged the graduates to strive to change some of the negative perceptions that the public had about health workers by doing their work diligently and humanely.

In a speech read on behalf of the Eastern Regional Minister, Mr Yaw Barimah, he appealed to the MOH and the GHS to consider absorbing the health aids into the main stream of the health system, so that the skills acquired by them could be beneficial to their sponsors, communities and the region as a whole. He said the government had voted 50 billion cedis out of the total national budget to address youth unemployment concerns.

The head of the Clinical Care of the Eastern Regional Secretariat of the Ghana Health Service, Dr Larbi Addo, called for the banning of the use of mobile phones in theatres and wards of hospitals in the country.

He said in recent times, it was becoming a disturbing feature, when in the middle of handling crisis situation in wards some young health workers abandon their roles to respond to calls on their mobile phones. Dr Addo advised the graduates that health care was a delicate profession, which unlike other professions, where mistakes could be reversed, "in medicine, any mistake could lead to disastrous consequences, which could not be reversed."

The course co-ordinator, Ms Esther Akuffo, said after the first health aids training course by the Koforidua Regional Hospital, the hospital received a lot of applications and after the necessary consultations, 71 out of the 149 applicants were selected for the course.

She said after six months of training, including eight weeks in the classroom and eight weeks of practical training at Donkorkrom in the Afram Plains, 69 of the trainees successfully passed the final examination.

Earlier in a welcome address, the Medical Director of the Koforidua Regional Hospital, Dr Obeng Apori, appealed for the consideration of the trained health aids, who hailed from the region, when it came to the absorption of health aids into the mainstream health system.