Dr. Anthony Nsiah-Asare, the Director-General of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), has blamed the lack of progress in most healthcare delivery outcomes in the Greater Accra Region (GAR), on poor leadership.
He said the challenges were very prominent at the district levels, and indicated that the GHS Council was not pleased with reports, and consequently resolved to start its District Health System Operationality (DISHOP) leadership training to change the occurrences.
“Information sometimes reaching us indicates that there are so many conflicts among various members of staff, leading to the slowdown in performances,” hence, the training would build the capacities for better performances, he said.
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He said the GHS Council had reviewed the curriculum for the training, which would hopefully start somewhere around May 2019.
Dr. Nsaih-Asare was speaking at the two-day 2018 Greater Accra Regional Performance Review meeting held in Accra on Wednesday, and guided by the year’s theme: “Using Operational Research and ICT to Improve Health Outcomes in the Greater Accra Region”.
The meeting, which was organized by the Greater Accra Regional Health Directorate, brought together representatives from all public and quasi-government healthcare institutions, as well as the Christian Health Association of Ghana (CHAG), to reflect and take stock of their collective performance in the previous year.
Dr. Nsaih-Asare expressed his displeasure about the deep-rooted attitudes of some public sector health professionals particularly doctors and nurses, who have taken to diverting their energies to Locums in other private institutions and neglecting their core duties in their major posts.
He said these staff pretended to be working, while in actual fact they just use their official posts as a resting place after their exhaustive locums elsewhere, and end up driving patients away because they were too tired to work.
He said, this was unprofessional and warned that such attitudes would no longer be tolerated by the GHS Council, and advised those professionals who preferred to work with the private sector to do so legally and desist from taking double salaries and taking the public health sector for granted.
The Director-General said the GHS had printed about 75,000 copies of its Code of Conduct and Disciplinary Procedures for distribution to all staff to imbibe and enforce.
The Service, he said would continue with its efforts to provide at least a vehicle for each District to facilitate their work, and promote the achievement of high-quality health outcomes as well as achieve Universal Health Coverage (UHC).
He commended all health workers for their sacrifices in spite of the numerous challenges and constraints they encountered in their line of duty and urged them to sustain the momentum to maintain the gains to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.
Source: GNA
