General News of Monday, 26 November 2001

Source: .

Ministry to introduce new health care system

The Ministry of Health will introduce a health delivery system, Nurse AIDE, in all major hospitals in the country.

This group of health workers would be trained in the hospitals to acquire practical skills within six months and could become fully trained nurses after two years of training in the wards.

Deputy Health Minister, Mr. Moses Dani Baah, announced this at the inauguration of the Word Alive School of Nursing (WASON) at Esiama at the weekend. He explained that these measures were aimed at reducing the high morbidity and mortality rates, inequalities in the health care services in the rural areas and to supplement the acute shortage of staff in the hospitals.

Mr. Dani Baah noted that the training of additional Community- based Health Planning and Service (CHPS) initiative, forms part of the Ministry's five-year health programme.

He regretted that the ministry improved physical infrastructure throughout the country but neglected the human resource development in its desire to make health care accessible to all.

"Such anomaly would be corrected to make the improvement in infrastructure, match the human resource development". Mr. Baah, advised the students to be disciplined, committed, patriotic and humane in their academic pursuit.

Miss Sophia Horner-Sam, deputy Western Regional Minister, appealed to the people of Nzema decent, to patronise the school in order to reduce migration and the large number of unemployed youth in the area.

She also advised the students to handle all equipment with care and to take their course seriously.