Obuasi, July 21, GNA - The Vice President, Alhaji Mahama on Saturday commended the efforts health workers are making towards the promotion of quality health care delivery in the country. He said the contributions of health workers and other service providers were supplementing the government efforts at addressing the welfare needs of Ghanaians.

The Vice President was addressing the management, nurses and staff of the Obuasi Government Hospital as part of his working visit to the Obuasi municipality. The Vice President had earlier inspected a 1.5 billion cedis, 25-bed children's ward being built by the Municipal Assembly for the hospital.

Messrs George Senefo-Antwi, the Project Manager and Patrick Thompson, Project Engineer of the Mining and Building Contractors (MBC), the contractor of the project told the Vice President that the project was about 80 per cent complete.

Alhaji Mahama commended the management, nurses and staff of the hospital for their contribution towards the health care delivery of the people in the municipality. "Let us all see how we can bring quality health care to our people", he said. He gave the assurance that the Kufuor administration was doing everything possible to ensure that health workers were motivated to enable them to carry out their good works to the nation. The Vice-President was hopeful that the children's ward was going to add value to the operations of the hospital and further help to improve health care delivery services at the municipality. Alhaji Mahama called on all Ghanaians to embrace the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) since it was the easy way to access affordable health care.

The Vice President said as part of the government's efforts to create jobs for the country's unemployed youth and also support the expansion of the health sector, health extension workers had been engaged under the National Youth Employment Programme (NYEP) and called on the nurses to give them the maximum encouragement and support in their duties. 21 July 07