Ministry to disseminate policies to health workers

Page 43
Feb 7, 2008

THE Human Resource for Health Development (HRHD) Directorate of the Ministry of Health has embarked on an exercise to disseminate strategies and policies of the ministry to the members of the health sector throughout the country.
The aim is to ensure that every worker becomes conversant with the policies and strategies of the Ministry of Health under its five-year policy.
The Director of the HRHD at the Ministry of Health, Dr Yaw Antwi-Boasiako, who made this known in an interview, said once members of the health sector were abreast of the strategies and policies of the ministry, they would work to ensure their realisation.
“We want to ensure that whatever they do falls in line with the policies and strategies of the ministry. We don’t want the situation whereby members of the health sector would be doing things that are different from the ministry’s own programmes or activities,” he said.
He noted that under the dissemination programme, the country would be divided into two zones, northern and southern, to ensure that the exercise was effectively carried out.
Dr Antwi-Boasiako said the lack of such exercise in the past had greatly affected the policies and programmes of the ministry, hence the need for the current exercise. He added that “the dissemination programme would bring together all the stakeholders in the health sector”.
He added that once the exercise was carried out, it would go a long way to boost healthcare delivery in the country.
He said as part of efforts to ensure effective healthcare delivery, a Health Workforce Observatory, which would ensure good governance in human resource for health management in the country, had been set up.
Dr Antwi-Boasiako said the programme would strengthen the stewardship and regulation capacity of the ministry and its agencies as well as support and promote evidence-based human resource for health policy, among other things.
He stated that the ‘observatory’ would also strive to draw on the experiences of already established World Health Organisation (WHO) observatories on human resource for health in the African region as well as health systems in the European regions.
“Human resource for health is now recognised as the key element for achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and scaling up health interventions especially in developing economies including Ghana,” he said.