DON'T INFLUENCE ADMISSION PROCESS (PAGE 20, DEC 2)

THE Northern Regional Minister, Mr Stephen Nayina, has cautioned advisory boards of health training institutions against influencing admission processes.
He noted that candidates who did not have the entry requirements should not be smuggled into the institutions since that could lead to obtaining mediocre products from the institutions and jeopardise healthcare service delivery.
Mr Nayina gave the warning in Tamale during the inauguration of the advisory boards of the various Ministry of Health/Ghana Health Service Training Institutions in the Northern Region.
They are the Nurses Training College in Tamale, Health Assistants Training schools in Damongo, Salaga, Yendi, and Nalerigu; Community Health Training School in Tamale and the School of Hygiene.
The boards are to, among other things, advise the principals on management and governance issues and support efforts at the mobilisation of extra funds and resources for infrastructure development.
The minister advised the boards to ensure that their immediate policies were geared towards guiding those institutions to produce “qualified and adequate human resources for our various health facilities across the region”.
He further entreated the board members to take cognisance of the oath they had taken and live by it.
“You are taking office at a time when strenuous efforts are being made by the government to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs); health training institutions are agencies that can play a major role in achieving this objective”, Mr Nayina said.
The Director of Human Resource Division of the Ministry of Health (MOH), Dr Appiah Denkyirah, in a speech read on his behalf, said that the MoH had to take some radical measures in an effort to curb the brain drain in the country.
The measures, he noted, included an increase in the numbers and intake into MOH training institutions in the country.
Dr Denkyirah, said currently the MOH had 56 training institutions and over 18,000 students, adding that each region had a Nursing and Midwifery Training School and Community Health Nurse Training schools except for the Greater Accra Region, and Health Assistants Clinical School.
“Admissions are highly competitive and yearly intake of over 7,000 which is only 17 per cent of the candidates who qualified and this has put so much stress on the schools’ infrastructure as well as overwhelmed the health tutors, as a result affecting academic performance”, he stated.
The director further explained that “the Advisory Board may choose its own chairman and meet half-yearly, except when the situation demands”.
He said the operating cost of the Advisory Board was decentralised, but that needed innovation.
“The Advisory Board shall channel all its reports through the Regional Director of Health Services to the Minister of Health”, he stated.