–BY Nadia Ntiamoah
In the wake of a revealing nationwide oversight tour, the Parliamentary Select Committee on Health is demanding immediate action from the government to address severe medical staffing shortfalls across the Northern regions.
The committee is calling for selective financial clearance to expedite the posting of doctors to hospitals that are critically understaffed, particularly in the Upper East, Upper West, Northern, and North East Regions.
The push follows alarming findings from visits to regional hospitals, where lawmakers observed a widespread lack of specialist care and dwindling numbers of medical personnel.
The Committee chair and Member of Parliament for Nabdam, Dr. Mark Kurt Nawaane, described the situation in some hospitals—especially in the Upper East—as “unacceptable.”
“In a regional hospital, one expects a team of specialists. But at the Upper East Regional Hospital, there is only one gynaecologist and one radiographer. That is not a regional standard—it’s more like a district hospital,” Dr. Nawaane told Asaase News.
The committee’s oversight tour was part of a broader parliamentary initiative to assess the state of healthcare delivery in the country. While many southern hospitals grapple with overcrowding and underfunding, facilities in the northern belt are facing near-collapse due to extreme personnel shortages.
These findings underscore the longstanding issue of regional disparities in healthcare resource allocation.
The problem, however, is not a lack of trained medical professionals. According to Dr. Nawaane, more than 500 doctors are currently awaiting posting.
The bottleneck, he argues, is a rigid, blanket approach to financial clearance by the government, which delays the recruitment process.
“We’re not asking for full-scale employment at once,” he explained.
“We’re saying let’s identify overstretched facilities—like Baptist Hospital in Nalerigu, which has just four doctors—and selectively post five or ten doctors there with immediate clearance.”
Beyond recruitment, the committee emphasized the need for structural reform in how hospitals manage their internally generated funds (IGF).
Dr. Nawaane urged hospital administrators to use IGF creatively to incentivize staff retention, including through housing, bonuses, and other welfare schemes, rather than solely for infrastructure maintenance.
“There is a human resource component that hospital management must actively handle,” he said.
“When a lone gynaecologist is overstretched, administrators must find ways to support them while lobbying for more personnel.”
