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A former Vice Chancellor of the University of Ghana, Professor Clifford Nii Boi Tagoe, has called for pragmatic steps to be taken to reduce the brain drain among medical doctors in the country.
He said the critical role doctors played in promoting health care required that policy reforms were taken by the government to ensure better remunerations to retain them in the country.
"The medical schools in the country have over the years trained quite a substantial number of doctors to sustain the doctor to patient ratio at about one to 6,000 population. But if we are still having a huge deficit, we need to be asking about where those we trained have gone," he added.
Matriculation
Prof. Tagoe was speaking at the second matriculation ceremony of the Accra College of Medicine (ACM), a private medical training school, last Saturday.
At the ceremony, 14 students, made up of four males and 10 females, were officially admitted to the school, bringing the total student population to 28.
Attractive salaries
Prof. Tagoe observed that the best way to deal with the problem was for government to pay doctors salaries that would keep them in the country.
He further observed that private participation in medical training was key to bridging the gap.
It was in that regard that he lauded the initiative by the founders of ACM to expand the frontiers of medical training.
He, however, stated that medical training required the use of appropriate methodology that would produce professionals with the right knowledge to respond to the dynamics in healthcare delivery.
"The advent of technology means that innovative ways of learning through practical and student-centred approaches have to be adopted," he stated.
ACM on track
For her part, the President of ACM, Prof. Afua Hesse, said the reliance on traditional approaches to learning had lost its relevance in an era of modern technology, saying ACM had put in place the right conditions for innovative learning.
She said the country needed a crop of medical doctors who would be dedicated and committed to their work against all odds.
Prof. Hesse asked the students to be disciplined and take their studies seriously, stressing that it took diligence and hard work to succeed in the medical profession.
