A total of 33 newly trained doctors from University for Development Studies (UDS) have graduated with a call on them to respect the cultural values of clients who would patronise their services.

The doctors are the third batch to be trained by UDS, which brings the total number to 186.

Professor Haruna Yakubu, Vice Chancellor said at the weekend that admission into the UDS School of Medicine and Health Sciences continue to be highly competitive.

He said out of a total of 1,582 qualified applications the university was able to admit only 122 representing eight per cent of the figure.

Prof Yakubu explained that the university is constrained by lack of infrastructure facilities teaching staff.

He appealed to the government to allow UDS to recruit its own staff to enhance academic work and also improve the development of the university to serve the purpose for which it was established.

He announced that UDS would soon enter into research collaboration with the Groningen University in the Netherlands to study and document some of Ghana’s indigenous knowledge and cultures to enhance the country’s development agenda.

He said the proposed research would focus on “Society and Change in Northern Ghana” and the purpose is to develop and augment the academic knowledge about the history of Northern Ghana in the context of long term processes of change and socio-economic and political inclusion and exclusion.

Prof Yakubu said UDS is also adopting innovative ways of helping to train more medical doctors for the country and as such the university had signed a memorandum of understanding with the Galilee International Management Institute in Israel, under, which the two institutions launched a programme for offering joint medical programme designed for both local and international students.

He said the training of these doctors would be done at the UDS Medical School and other medical schools outside Ghana to serve the needs of the country, Africa and the international community.

Prizes were given to the doctors for their outstanding performance during the seven- year programme with Edwin Sangwie emerging as the overall best student who swept four out of the six awards.