Health Care Workers Need Incentives

Dr. Adjei Adjetey, Director of Assin North district Health Service has called on the management of District Health Insurance Scheme to work out an incentive package for health service providers on monthly or quarterly basis as a way of motivating them to cope with the increasing workload. Dr Adjetey, who made the call when he delivered the 2006-2007 annual performance review report of the Assin North District Health Service at Foso commended the Assinman Health Insurance Scheme for their good work. He urged the management of the scheme to go the extra mile to achieve coverage of 80 percent in the coming year. He said the district maintained a high coverage of supervised delivery of 80 percent and attributed it to strategies that were put in place, including early referrals by traditional birth attendance and conveying of expectant mothers by the Ghana Private Road Transport Union (GPRTU) to health centres free of charge. Dr. Adjetey also commended the GPRTU for keeping faith with the memorandum of understanding (MOU) for conveying emergency obstetric cases to health facilities in the district. He said as a result, maternal mortality reduced from 13 in 2006 to eight in 2007, which he still described as high and stressed the need to reduce it further. He said, despite efforts made to have blood available at the hospital through blood donation campaigns, there were periods the hospital had difficulty obtaining blood for patients in need and therefore appealed to the people to voluntarily donate blood to the hospital blood bank. On disease control, Dr. Adjetey said malaria was the main cause for hospital attendance, accounting for 26 percent of all attendance. He however, said there has been a reduction in malaria admission due to early reporting at the out patient department and the patronage of NHIS. Dr. Adjetey said 206 cases of tuberculosis were detected at the hospital which is diagnostic centre and stressed that there was an improvement in TB cure rate in the district, increasing from 55 percent in 2006 to 83 percent last year. He appealed to the public to assist in the early detection of TB cases in the communities in order to improve the situation. Dr. Adjetey said 209 HIV/AIDs cases were diagnosed last year against 148 in 2006, adding that, several measures have been put in place to improve the situation, including health education, anti-retroviral treatment for HIV patients, for which 35 were currently registered. He appealed to all to help reduce the menace of HIV, through being faithful to their partners, abstinence and practice of safer sex, adding, “the challenges ahead of us are enormous and I hope with the right approach, sense of dedication and commitment we shall achieve the desired results.”