Prof Otoo Ellis presenting an award to one of the best students. Inset: Alban Bagbin
THE MINISTER of Health, Alban Bagbin has said the health sector is saddled with so many problems because it was like a jungle.
He said the 75 different professionals in the sector seemed not to like each other and acted more like competitors than people working in an interdependent relationship.
Mr. Bagbin explained that the health sector had been destroyed by the lack of industrial harmony because the institutional arrangements, legal framework and relationship between the various professions in the sector were not harmonized.
He consequently pleaded with health professionals in the country to give him the opportunity to take a deeper look into the sector, while assuring them that his ministry was working very hard to find lasting solutions to these discrepancies.
The minister made these remarks when he addressed the 43rd Anniversary and 5th Congregation of the College of Health and Well-Being at Kintampo in the Brong Ahafo region on Friday.
The event which saw the passing out of about 1,800 graduands comprising the 2010, 2011 and 2012 year groups was under the theme ‘43 Years of Training Mid-Level Health Professionals: The Successes, Challenges and Prospects.’
According to him, government was considering a proposal to turn the College of Health and Well-Being into a university college.
He later undertook a tour of the school to inspect abandoned and ongoing projects and also cut the sod to begin the construction of a four-storey modern hostel facility. The project will cost GH¢3.2m and is expected to be completed within eight months.
Vice Chancellor of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Prof. William Otoo Ellis announced that come next year, the college will be affiliated to the KNUST as plans were far advanced to finalize that process.
He noted that the future of the college was very promising and charged management and other relevant stakeholders to do their part to move its vision forward.
Director of the college, Dr Emmanuel Teye Adjase, in his address said the former Kintampo Rural Health Training School was established in 1969 with a mandate to train middle level health professionals to provide quality and comprehensive health care especially for those living in rural areas.
According to him, the college had improved and expanded in recent years.
Currently, the institution runs twenty basic, post-basic/undergraduate programmes of study in the areas of community medicine, dentistry and health, medical laboratory science, health information management, health promotion, applied epidemiology, community mental health and clinical psychiatry among others.
In line with its aspirations, Dr Adjase said the college had acquired an additional 3,000 acres of land needed for the accelerated expansion of infrastructure to accommodate the ever increasing number of programmes of study needed to facilitate the training of health professionals not only for Ghana but for the ECOWAS sub-region and beyond.
 FROM Fred Tettey Alarti-Amoako, Sunyani
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