A Medical Practitioner and Member of Parliament for Anyaa-Sowutuom Constituency, Dr. Dickson Adomako Kissi, says Ghana stands to benefit from nurses relocating to the UK and other parts of the world for better working conditions.
Adomako Kissi in an interview on Good Morning Ghana on Metro TV on Friday, August 18, 2023, indicated that those nurses later return to transform the country’s health sector with their knowledge acquired outside Ghana.
“And hear me out, you may not like this but there are positives of people traveling outside. And I tend to love the positives more in the sense that many who have returned though few have made tremendous impacts on Ghana in terms of the knowledge they acquire outside and I will cite just one person – Professor Frimpong. If we had ten of Prof. Frimpongs in Ghana, our healthcare would move from what it is to a very bigger level. And you can only have Prof. Frimpongs if you have more people leaving the country,” he told Dr. Randy Abbey.
The Anyaa-Sowutuom MP went on to highlight the positive impacts of the nurses’ and other health workers’ exodus from the country.
“Pardon me, I need to make people aware that exposure matters. You know, I was here talking about diasporans and the impact they make on our country. Every nurse that leaves the country one way or the other still helps the country.”
“The Ghana Health Service made it clear that there are plenty [nurses] sitting home waiting to be fielded. So, one, it creates job opportunities for those who are home and waiting to be fielded. And then, I am of the opinion that the additional skills that our nurses and doctors acquire outside of the shores of Ghana [are] in all to our benefit because many come back and get involved in the day-day healthcare delivery. When I was training in Korle-Bu, I had clinicians from the US who are Ghanaians who would come and teach us and I really think that I was impacted by the lectures I had by these now American-Ghanaians who have learned more,” Adomako Kissi argued.
He also stated that the post-Brexit and the novel coronavirus disease that caused a global scourge in 2020 have opened the floodgates of opportunities for African health practitioners to move to the United Kingdom.
“I think that overall, we stand to benefit and it just so happens that in the Europe continent because of this Brexit, more room for Africans to come on board. It used to be the Polish and Eastern Europe that was going into England more so than Africa so it isn’t that the Bris have been needing more health workers. It is just that Covid plus Brexit have putten a bigger burden on the continent and by virtue that they now need more nurses and doctors.”
Touching on factors influencing the health workers’ exodus, he pointed out that health personnel are paid a pittance and the quest for greener pastures prompts their decision to move outside the country.
“In all sincerity, we don’t pay our health workers well and health workers elsewhere I mean, especially in America, earn heavily, and when you have tasted a paycheck from working in the US doing nursing or doctoring, you come to terms with the fact that you have been taking peanuts for the same job that you do for your country,” he said.
Dr. Dickson Adomako Kissi stated that health personnel still working in Ghana have the motherland at heart and want to help the Ghanaian people other than that most of them would have left.
“Those of us who stay, stay by virtue of a commitment to help our own Ghanaians, and that commitment level to a large extent may be because of our love for our country to a certain level that allows us to work for less, and not all clinicians are cut for that. We need to be devoted, overly devoted,” the MP stated.
Every year, many specialist nurses leave Ghana for better-paid jobs overseas. A House of Commons report has found more than 3,000 health professionals left Ghana for the UK in each of the three years to 2021. According to the BBC, in 2022, 1,200 nurses left Ghana for the UK for better working conditions.
Between January 01, and July 07, 2023, some 10,209 nurses sought clearance from the Ghana Registered Nurses and Midwives Association (GRNMA) Secretariat to leave the country for greener pastures. Out of the figure, about 4,000 were cleared and have traveled to work outside as nurses.
