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The Head of Biomedical Engineering at the Ministry of Health (MoH), Dr Nicholas Adjabu, has called for the recruitment of more biomedical engineers across the country’s hospitals to enhance the quality, efficiency and safety of healthcare delivery.
Speaking at the closing session of the ninth Biomedical Engineers’ Training Programme in Accra, Dr Adjabu emphasised that biomedical engineers played a crucial role in ensuring patient safety and operational efficiency in health facilities.
He added that even small, consistent improvements in equipment management contributed significantly to higher-quality healthcare delivery.
He, however, expressed concern that many hospitals still operated without biomedical engineers, which hampered timely maintenance and repair of critical medical equipment.
“Our vision is that every hospital, regardless of its location, will have an engineer responsible for day-to-day maintenance and technical operations,” Dr Adjabu said.
He explained that the Korea Foundation for International Healthcare (KOFIH), in collaboration with the Ministry of Health (MoH), had been training about 40 biomedical engineers annually to improve the management and maintenance of medical equipment in public health facilities.
He said the initiative had, over the years, enhanced the technical capacity and responsiveness of biomedical engineers, reducing the need to deploy engineers from Accra to distant regions for routine maintenance or equipment repair.
“Every year, we train about 40 engineers working in public health facilities across the country.
Through this training, the skills and confidence of our engineers have greatly improved, but there are still many hospitals without biomedical engineers.
Only a few facilities currently have dedicated personnel responsible for managing their medical equipment,” he said.
Dr Adjabu encouraged participants to apply the knowledge gained immediately upon returning to their respective hospitals.
“Whatever you have learned here, no matter how small, start implementing it.
If it’s about documenting the equipment in your facility or improving a maintenance process, start small.
Once you take the first steps and demonstrate improvement, initiatives that require funding will naturally attract support,” he said.
The 2025 KOFIH Local Training Programme for Biomedical Engineering Professionals formed part of efforts to build the technical capacity of healthcare engineers to manage the over 100,000 pieces of medical equipment used in public health facilities nationwide.
The nine-day training brought together 40 biomedical engineers from public health facilities, including teaching, regional, and district hospitals, as well as “governmental hospitals” such as the Military and Police Hospitals.
The programme featured intensive, hands-on sessions focusing on key areas of medical equipment management.
Participants received training on autoclaves, chemistry analyzers, medical equipment inventory systems, ultrasound machines, dialysis machines, circuitry design, and medical gas systems, among others.
A young biomedical engineer from the University of Ghana Medical Centre (UGMC), Agnes Clayman, emerged as the best participant after excelling in the end-of-training examination.
Participants were also presented with toolkits to support their work in their respective facilities.
The Country Director of KOFIH in Ghana, Bomin Yang, reaffirmed the foundation’s commitment to supporting Ghana in strengthening its health system through the continuous training and capacity building of biomedical engineers.
