Mr. Abu Kabiebata Kansangbata, Deputy Upper West Regional Minister has stated that allowing Medical Doctors to become administrators in the health delivery system is a mistake the nation has allowed over the years.

Mr. Kansangbata noted that it is about time the country take a second look at the situation in view of the high attrition rate of medical officers in the public sector.

“Sometimes, some of them immediately after their house-man duties go into public health and then convert to become administrators, preventing them from practicing in the hospitals”, he noted.

The Deputy Regional Minister said this in an address to participants at the 2013 Upper West Regional Annual Health Sector Performance Review meeting in Wa, on Tuesday.

The review was under the theme: “Addressing the Bottlenecks in Human Resource Policy Implementation and Management for Enhanced Staff Performance and Effective Health Service Delivery in the Upper West Region”.

Mr. Kansangbata said the situation is adversely affecting the Doctor/Patient ratio in the country, most especially, in the deprived regions of the country.

He said in the Upper West Region for instance, the Doctor/Patient Ratio stood at 1:74,290, and even more terrible is the case of the Ghanaian specialist Doctors, which is currently 1:106,128.

“As a nation, we must sit up to address these shortfalls in the number of medical officers”, he noted.

Mr. Kansangbata, however, commended the health sector in the region for their enthusiasm and commitment to duty.

He said government appreciates such wonderful efforts and would, therefore, continue to provide the necessary logistics and infrastructure to facilitate service delivery to the people.

Dr. Abdulai Adams Forgor, the Upper West Regional Director of Health Services admonished participants to take the review serious, to enable them to share their successes, experiences and challenges to improve on their performances.