The Minister of Health, Mr Kwaku Agyeman-Manu has tasked Health Service Administrators (HSA) to secure land titles for all medical facilities in the country to help reduce encroachment on their lands.

He urged the HSA to comply with the regulations on disposal of public assets to end audit quarries on the property of health facilities that they disposed of.

This was contained in a speech read on behalf of the Minister at the formal opening of the 41st Annual Conference and Continuing Professional Education Programme of the Association of Health Services Administrators, Ghana (AHSAG) at Koforidua.

The five-day conference was organised on the theme “Mobilisation for the attainment of the health-related SDG’s-The role of the Health Service Administrator”.

Mr Agyeman-Manu complained about poor maintenance of public health facilities and urged the AHSAG to come out with more innovative and cost efficient ways of running public health facilities.

He said government had decided to complete the construction of all on-going health facilities including ten polyclinics in Central Region and five polyclinics in Greater Accra.

In a speech read on his behalf, the Director General of Ghana Health Service, Dr Anthony Nsiah Asare, urged the members of the AHSAG to get themselves acquainted with the vision of his administration to use ICT to strengthen health service delivery to meet the SDGs.

He urged AHSAG to take measures to reduce cost of operations in health facilities and use the savings to improve health service delivery in their facilities.

Dr Asare said he had directed that the list of qualified HSAs between 2013 and 2017 in the country to be included in the recruitment plan of the GHS for 2018 and assured that his office would continue to engage the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Health to seek clearance for their formal employment.

The President of AHSAG, Mr Albert Asiedu-Offei called for the passage of the Legislative Instrument for the implementation of the Mental Health Law.

Earlier in a welcoming address, the Eastern Regional Director of Health Service, Dr Mrs Charity Sarpong regretted the indiscipline by some health workers which turned to undermine the achievements made in the health sector and urged all health professionals to avoid unethical conduct and behaviours that tend to drive clients away from seeking service.

She called on HSAs to implement a series of measures to monitor the altitude of health workers in their facilities and to promptly enforce laid down disciplinary measures to correct any unacceptable professional behaviour in their facilities.