Ghanaian Doctors in North America Deserve Commendation

Doctors are very important to every nation. Without doctors, one cannot imagine how anyone can cope in life.

Doctors save lives, but their importance goes beyond that. Doctors also make a difference by helping minimise pain, recover from disease faster or learn to live with disabling injury. And, that is what makes doctors important to society.

It is against this background that we welcome the decision by a group of Ghanaian physicians and surgeons in North America to come back home to help the country with their experience and skills they have acquired abroad.

A delegation of the newly formed Ghana Physicians and Surgeons Foundation of North America disclosed their intention to President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo, in Accra, on Monday.

According to Professor Elijah Paintsil who led the delegation, members of the group were preparing themselves to come back home to help improve the health care delivery of the country.

He said, they were motivated by the fact that they were trained with the tax payers' money and although they had developed their careers abroad, they now want to come home to serve their country.

Prof. Paintsil indicated that Ghana could do better in healthcare, and pointed out that members of the foundation were ready to put their world class medical practice at the disposal of the country to help improve health care delivery in the country.

"I think Ghana can do it. We want Ghana to again take on its leadership role to be the first country to really have a modernised healthcare to even attract cross border people from all over the world" he said.

The decision by the Ghanaian doctors in North America must be welcome news for all Ghanaians because the country needs more doctors to keep the people healthy.

Currently, the country is struggling to hit the target of one doctor to 7,500 persons as set by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

What this means is that there is the need for more doctors to cater for the patients in the hospitals.

And certainly, the decision by the doctors is going to support the effort to increase the doctor/patient ratio in the country.

Besides, the doctors are going to transfer their expertise to Ghana to provide high quality health care to the people.

While commending the doctors for their decision to come back home, we urge the government to create an enabling environment for them to feel at home.

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