‘Stop politicising doctors’ strike’

Source: Daily Graphic Ghana - The Ghana Coalition of NGOs in Health (GCNH) has called on Ghanaians to stop the politicisation of the strike by doctors in the public sector and look for a more sustainable way of resolving the issue.

It called on both the government and the doctors to vacate their entrenched positions, saying, “The politicisation of the issues cannot solve the problem, rather it escalates the already tense situation and misleads the public.”

At a press conference in Accra on Monday, the coalition also appealed to the striking doctors to rescind their decision and go back to work in the interest of saving lives.

According to the coalition, visits by some of its members to some health facilities in the Northern, Brong Ahafo, Upper East, Upper West, Central and Eastern regions showed that the doctors there were working.

They said it was only in the Greater Accra and the Ashanti regions that the strike was being enforced.

The coalition, therefore, appealed to the few striking doctors that much as they were right in their demand for conditions of service, “what will it profit anybody if the conditions of service is signed at the cost of human lives?”

It also asked, “What will be the profit if state institutions mandated to negotiate with the doctors finally agree on the conditions of service for doctors after many lives are lost?”

The coalition said although the doctors were aware that once in negotiation they could not go on strike, they had done it to press home their demand for their long awaited conditions of service, saying that it was critical and called for a prompt action by the government.

The coalition noted, “Some pronouncements by the government, including President John Mahama on one hand and the Ghana Medical Association on the other, were not palatable.”

According to the coalition, pressing human resource issues unattended to by the government within the health sector since 1998 had contributed to the current state of the health sector in terms of managing human resources, especially doctors and nurses.