The Ghana Health Service (GHS) has lost 525 of its skilled personnel and profession­als to brain drain within the last 12 months, the Di­rector-General, Dr Patrick Kuma Aboagye, has revealed.
To this end, he said the service had put in place a number of measures to mitigate the impact of the loss of these professionals on healthcare delivery in the country.

“Definitely we’ve suffered with the brain drain but looking at the numbers, in terms of absolute numbers we are not affected, we have lost experienced people, we have lost some skilled staff but we have also put in place measures to ensure that in the next two years we are able to replace them,” he said.

Dr Kuma Aboagye disclosed this in Accra yesterday when the GHS took its turn at the weekly briefings organised by the Ministry of Information.

He explained that the measures adopted to mitigate the effects of the brain drain phenomenon included, further training for staff, the recruitment of more nurses, stressing that “currently we have to recruit additional nurses and we have been able to send doctors to the rural areas.”