About 2,000 nurses working in state and mission health facilities in the country have migrated abroad in recent years, the Ministry of Health has said.
At least 1,400 of the emigrant nurses worked under the Ghana Health Service (GHS), while the remaining 600 worked at the Christian Health Association of Ghana (CHAG) facilities.
The Minister of Health, Kwaku Agyemang-Manu, who said this when he took his turn at the Minister’s Press briefing in Accra yesterday, did not, however, indicate the period the migration happened.
He said the situation had not significantly challenged work at health facilities.
“We are getting dire distress messages from the facilities that if we don’t bring new ones, they can’t work.
We are managing the situation,” the minister added.
He said although the phenomenon of health workers’ migration was a global occurrence, the MoH worked closely with the Ministry of Employment and Labour Relations to streamline the migration policy to address current and future emerging issues.
Mr. Agyemang-Manu, who focused on three main areas of achievements —policies, strategic plans, collaborations, and legislations; human resources for health achievements and national E-health project, and health infrastructure projects, added that 636 nurses and midwives specialists were trained from 2019 to 2022, while 888 senior medical specialists also received training in various areas.
On recruitment, he said about 152,472 were employed from 2017 to 2022.
