The Central Regional Director of Ghana Health Service, Dr Alexis Nang-Beifubah has stated emphatically that inability of residents to motivate doctors posted to the area in the form of gifts is one of the causes of the shortage of doctors in the area, MyNewGh.com reports.

According to him, the cost of living in the central region is also high to the extent that food is too expensive thereby scaring doctors and other senior health professionals away.

“A young doctor who has graduated from his or her service with huge debt cannot use his 5% of his or her salary to buy food” he explained.

The Health Director made this known at the 2018 Central Regional Health Sector annual performance review meeting held at University of Cape Coast (UCC) which attracted student nurses and medical students as well as health workers and traditional authorities among others.

It was held under the theme “Achieving Universal Health Coverage: The role of stakeholders”.

He revealed that in the recent financial clearance that was released for the recruitment of newly qualified medical officers, the region was allocated 13 medical officers and three dental officers.

Out of the number, according to him, only four of them responded to their invitation for the recruitment interview because of some of these challenges.

Dr. Nang Beifubah said two of the four indicated that they chose the central region because they wanted to be at the Kasoa Polyclinic and that anything short of them being posted to the Kasoa Polyclinic means that they would not take up the offer.

He stated that at the end of it all when the Central Regional Health Directorate concluded the interviews and issued out their posting letters, none of them returned to take up their postings.

According to him, it is about time the policymakers at the Ministry of Health and the Ghana Health Service put in place practical strategies to address the canker saying “otherwise we all may be sitting on a time bomb which could explode embarrassingly in our face one day”.

In a bid to address the acute shortage of doctors in the region, he explained that his outfit has proposed and designed some incentive packages for implementation by district health directorates with support from the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies.

Dr. Beifubah underscored the need for stakeholders, local authorities, Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies, Regional Coordinating Council to pay closer attention to how they train the health human resources to ensure that they achieve equity in the distribution of available health human resources.

The Regional Health Director, therefore, made a passionate appeal to Minister of Health, the Director General of the Ghana Health Services to do all they can to get newly qualified doctors and other categories of health staff to take up their postings the Central Region.