General Secretary of the Ghana Registered Nurses and Midwives Association, David Tenkorang Twum, has called on government to halt the reintroduction of the community health workers.

According to him, the community health nurses cannot be deployed when there are professionally trained nurses without employment.

His comments follow a memorandum of understanding signed between the Ghana Health Service and Youth Employment Agency for the reintroduction of the modular six months training of community health workers.

He further concerted that the YEA has every right to “support government in creating jobs for the youth of this country”. That notwithstanding, he explained that the Association has “walked this path before” and “we clearly understand the processes”.

“Where were these community health workers when we were fighting the first and second wave of COVID-19? What makes you think that somebody who has been trained for six months or four months can educate the good people of this country better than a professionally trained nurse or midwife?

“As far as we are concerned, the reasons they adduce is simply a nonstarter and if they like they can go ahead… But we are working in the various communities and we think that these people will not inure to the benefits of our members”.
David Tenkorang Twum

Community health nurses not properly remunerated

Justifying his stance, Mr Tenkorang-Twum noted that because some of the community health nurses “are not properly remunerated”, they get frustrated on the job. This, he explained, causes the nurses to vent their spleen on patients and relatives.

“These are the issues that we are talking about here, we want quality of care for the ordinary Ghanaian. So, if you have professionals who can run our hospitals and give precise and equitable healthcare, why go for somebody who is half-baked?”
David Tenkorang-Twum

Touching further on the decision by the GHS and YEA to reintroduce the training of community health nurses, Mr Tenkorang-Twum explained that they were “categorical in the usage of the word community health nurses”.

“I, personally, when I read it, I realized that they got it wrong and I think that they have to apologize for the wrong usage of that nomenclature. Be that as it may, what we are trying to say is that these community health workers will end up in a hospital anyway and besides they quoted copious ILO conventions… I see a very shallow and pedestrian interpretation because it’s country specific.

“It is country specific because countries that have problems with healthcare in terms of human resource is where you deploy these community health nurses and that is what the article stipulates. Not when we have trained [and] highly skilled nurses and midwives unemployed, then you want to deploy community health nurses”.
David Tenkorang-Twum

Provision of quality healthcare

Earlier, Deputy Chief Executive of the YEA, Alhaji Ibrahim Bashiru, speaking on the issue revealed that the initiative is part of efforts to augment the fight against Covid-19 in Ghana.

Furthermore, he revealed that the move will provide quality health care delivery services especially to rural communities.

“It is the hope of the YEA that these young people will help in the fight against Covid”.
Alhaji Ibrahim Bashiru

On his part, Director of the Ghana Health Service, Dr. Patrick Kuma Aboagye who signed the MoU explained that beneficiaries of this initiative who prove themselves worthy, will eventually be absorbed into the Service.

“We will also do our best to build the capacity of these Community Health Workers so that they can move to the next level. And for those who are able to make it in to join our health sector were we are ready to make them become part of our team to continue to render services”.
Dr. Patrick Kuma Aboagye