No, this is not an article explaining what Health Minister Kwaku Agyeman-Manu’s role was in the Sputnik V vaccine Saga.
I know the minister personally, and although I never say nobody is ever at fault he proved his integrity to me many years ago.
Like I wrote this is not about the Sputnik Saga, this is about a much bigger national problem and in my opinion a disgrace and huge national health problem.
Recently, it came to the news that 400 Ghanaian foreign trained doctors and dentists have to wait up to one year to receive the results of their national exams to be able to practice in Ghana.
The reason I am writing on this is not only because my own daughter Djifa – almost graduated Ghanaian doctor (by September 2021) – is enthusiastic and motivated to come home and be a Ghanaian doctor.
My daughter, like many Ghanaians abroad will want to be a doctor in Ghana although she could make much more money in Europe and you know why? Because she said: Papa we need doctors harder in Ghana than in Europe.
Whereas in western Europe the norm is 1 doctor per 800 patients, we in Ghana in the bigger cities have about 1 doctor per 8,000 patients and in some of our sparsely populated areas, only 1 doctor to 60,000 patients. The average doctor patient ratio is 1/10,350 patients whereas the commonwealth recommends doctor per 5,000 patients.
The problems causing this are; firstly because we have a very low capacity to train doctors in Ghana. Around 200 to 250 medical students graduate annually. So if we would rely on Ghana’s training capacity to fulfill even Commonwealth recommendations it would probably take over 20 years to reach an already very low doctor/patient ratio of 1/5,000.
An extra problem is that Ghanaian doctors are actually good doctors. This results in many doctors who are going abroad to specialize, end up with good job offers and don’t come back to Ghana. Although I don’t have exact figures but I know several Ghanaian doctors from the USA and Canada and I estimate that half of them don’t return.
A good (doctor) friend of mine told me once that there were more Ghanaian doctors in the State of New York alone than in the whole of Ghana. Hearing my motivated daughter saying she wants to come back home to be a doctor in Ghana because Ghana needs it more than Europe makes that I admire her and her foreign trained colleagues even more. I don’t want to judge the Ghanaian Doctors abroad because some of them come back and practice a few years in Ghana before they retire.
But Minister Ageyeman-Manu why are we making it so difficult for our motivated and hard needed doctors to come home and practice?
Why don’t we check and recognize certain doctor’s degrees of other countries and allow foreign trained and especially foreign trained Ghanaian doctors just to register in Ghana and practice?
I personally know a foreign doctor with a Ghanaian wife who failed twice in Ghana, although he had British, Indian and European degrees. Just because the professor had never heard of the latest medical information he referred to.
Mr. Minister do you think European, American, British, Chinese and other medical degrees are inferior to Ghanaian degrees? I understand the even great Cuban and Russian degrees, although using a lower basic education system and quicker speciality are of good quality.
A doctors degree of one European member state qualifies in whole Europe. Once we establish that certain degrees are of a good standard why doesn’t Ghana just accepts these degrees and simply register these doctors without sitting their exams again, so we can fill the shortages of doctors for all Ghanaians in the shortest possible time.
It’s the same in many other professions and degrees, even Commonwealth degrees are not always accepted in Ghana and people need another exam to qualify in Ghana. WHY?
I don’t know if this is misplaced Ghanaian pride, jealousy of doctors who never had a chance to study abroad or political payback.
But I know one thing for sure: We are hurting Ghanaian patients and at risk that motivated young Ghanaian doctors search their luck elsewhere.
Author: Nico van Staalduinen
