The Ministry of Health (MOH) in the Upper East Region would in September this year start a two-year community health nursing programme to train more nurses for the rural areas.

The programme would also include six months training for community health aides, who would be expected to stay and provide health services in their communities after acquiring skills in health delivery.

Dr. Erasmus Agongo, Regional Director of Health Services said this at Bolgatanga on Friday when he briefed the Regional Security Committee on the health situation in the region. He said the ministry also had plans to introduce the "Navrongo Approach", by encouraging nurses to stay and work in the communities.

The "Navrongo Approach", he explained was a system whereby a compound is built in a community for one or two nurses with a unit attached, where they could attend to patients but would mostly go from house-to-house to see and address the people's health needs.

Dr. Agongo said the Regional Directorate of Health Services have planned to take up these measures to address the problem of inadequate health personnel which presently stands at one nurse to 2,000 people and one doctor to 4,000 people, adding that but for the Cuban doctors, there would have been no specialists in almost all the various units.

He said the region is poor and deprived and has many health problems including, diarrhoeal diseases, malaria, malnutrition, tuberculosis and elephantiasis. Dr. Agongo said the programme to train more health workers was drawn with the hope that the district assemblies would help by partly sponsoring the students who would then work in their areas after the training.

Mr. Mahami Salifu, the Regional Minister, in reaction, said the district assemblies and the co-ordinating council were prepared to do their best for the successful running of the programme.