Cape Coast, July 3, GNA - Dr George Amofa, the Deputy Director General of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), has urged personnel of the Service to work hard to help rekindle its core values and restore its image.

He said such core values as empathy and care have been lost and need to be restored to facilitate improved service delivery to patients. Expressing these sentiments on Thursday at the opening of a two-day seminar on "Leadership Dissemination" at Cape Coast, Mr Amofa said, rather than showing compassion and have fellow feeling for the sick, some health personnel were now just working to be paid. The seminar, a pilot project, is being attended by six District Health Directorates and the Central Regional Health Directorate with the aim of improving health delivery coverage through effective leadership. The districts are the Cape Coast, Abura-Asebu-Kwamankese, Twifo-Heman- Lower and Upper Denkyira, Gomoa and Mfantsiman Districts. It was being jointly sponsored by the GHS, USAID and the Adventist Relief Agency (ADRA).

Dr Amofa said it was unfortunate that, these days health professional could laid down their tools in exchange for human lives when their expectations were not being met and added that the "human-touch" in the profession has been lost. He emphasized that the GHS, believed in excellence and personnel must acquire the right attitude and skills to help produce excellent results.

According to him, lack of transparency and self-centredness among personnel, bred suspicion and mistrust at the work place, resulting in low output and appealed to the participants to take the programme seriously to help facilitate attitudinal change in the Service. The Deputy Director-General announced that a customer service care would be launched at the end of the year, as part of measures to enhance performance of personnel.

Throwing more light on the seminar, Dr Aaron Offei, Regional Director of Health Services, said it is to equip leaders in the sector to identify challenges in their areas and evolve plans to resolve them as well as improve their human relations with their subordinates. He said the participating districts are required to choose topics based on their working experience, with much emphasis on team work, transparency and performance enhancement.

Dr Offei noted that even though the Service was constrained by inadequate resources, there was the need for personnel to look beyond resources and work hard to meet the challenges. Dr William Brown, the Country Director of ADRA, urged the participating districts to work hard to help attain the desired results. During an open forum, some of the participants expressed concern that, the advent of spiritual churches and quack doctors who profess to provide healing to people, were becoming a hindrance to effective health care delivery.