Ghana must urgently review its health workforce strategy to address shortages and improve the deployment and retention of specialist health professionals, the Director of Nursing and Midwifery at the Ghana Health Service (GHS), Dr Eva Mensah, has said.
She said investments in hospitals and specialised medical equipment would not translate into improved health outcomes without adequately trained nurses, midwives and other health professionals to provide care and operate the equipment.
“We need to urgently overhaul our specialist health workforce planning to ensure that we have the right number of professionals, with the right skills, deployed to the places where they are most needed,” she said.
Dr Mensah made the call yesterday at the 11th Annual General Meeting and 6th Scientific Conference of the Ghana College of Nurses and Midwives (GCNM) at the Pentecost Convention Centre at Gomoa Fetteh in the Central Region.
The five-day conference, which began on October 4 and ends on October 8, 2026, is being held on the theme: “Building a Resilient Specialist Nursing and Midwifery Workforce to Improve Health Outcomes.”
Dr Mensah said Ghana’s changing disease burden, particularly the rising incidence of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), required an expansion of specialist skills to meet the growing demand for healthcare.
She cited heart disease, stroke, diabetes, cancer, kidney disease and respiratory illnesses among the conditions increasingly confronting the country, adding that NCDs accounted for about 43 per cent of all causes of mortality.
Dr Mensah also expressed concern about maternal health, citing an increase in institutional maternal mortality from 535 to 985 per 100,000 live births in 2025.
She said the staffing norms guiding the health sector, which were established in 2014 and revised in 2015, were no longer adequate to meet the country’s changing healthcare needs and should be reviewed urgently.
Dr Mensah further called for specialist training to be linked to employment opportunities, career progression and professional responsibilities to ensure that highly trained personnel were assigned roles that made full use of their expertise.
She also called for stronger measures to retain health professionals, noting that the migration of doctors, nurses, midwives and other specialists remained a major challenge to the health system.
The Chief Programme Officer for Allied Health at the Ministry of Health, Dr Ignatius Abowini Nchor Awinibuno, who represented the Minister of Health, Mr Kwabena Mintah Akandoh, said the Ministry was committed to ensuring a continually evolving health sector capable of responding to changing patient needs.
He said nurses and midwives played critical roles in ensuring continuity of care, early intervention and the management of patients with complex and long-term conditions.
Dr Awinibuno assured that the Ministry would work to ensure the equitable distribution of health professionals to improve health outcomes.
The President of the GCNM, Professor Victoria Bubunyo Bam, said the College remained committed to strengthening specialist nursing and midwifery despite resource constraints.
She appealed to the Ministry of Health and other stakeholders to provide greater support for the College’s infrastructure development and specialist training programmes.
FROM ABIGAIL ANNOH, GOMOA FETTEH
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