Last year, the Ghana Registered Nurses and Midwives Association (GRNMA) said, over 3,000 nurses and midwives, left the country to seek greener pastures since the beginning of the year.
The Association attributes the high rate of migration of health professionals to unfair salary scales and poor conditions of service.
According to The Ghana Registered Nurses and Midwives Association, the government has over the years failed to implement collectively agreed conditions of service.
Similarly, in the last six years, nearly 150 experienced nurses and other health professionals from Pantang Hospital, have left the country in search of greener pastures.
100 are specialized psychiatric and general nurses, with the remainder consisting of doctors, pharmacists, technicians, and other experienced healthcare delivery personnel.
According to hospital data, the number of experienced professionals who have left their jobs has been increasing at an alarming rate since the outbreak of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
As the country continues to grapple with the mass exodus of nurses, the UK government in its revised code of practice for international recruitment of health and social care personnel published on the NHS Employers website, has included Ghana in the list of 53 countries that should not be actively targeted for recruitment by health and social care employers.
A release on the NHS website stated that the countries listed have a UHC Service Coverage Index that is lower than 50 and a density of doctors, nurses and midwives that is below the global median (48.6 per 10,000 population).
However, welcoming this sounds on the face value, the fundamental question that needs to be addressed is, why this mass exodus?
In the considered opinion of this newspaper, it is regrettable that in recent years Ghanaian health professionals, especially nurses, have been leaving the country in droves in search of professional fulfillment due, mainly, to poor conditions of service at home and lack of appreciation for the sacrifices they make just as they work under an environment of inadequate facilities.
From the foregoing, we call on the governments to significantly increase budgetary allocation to the health sector, the working condition in the health sector must be improved, there should be better remuneration and motivation for health workers.
