Ghana gets 297 new doctors inducted

Around 297 newly qualified medical doctors and dentists were inducted at a ceremony in Ghana's capital city Accra on December 21. Among the young men and women were those who had graduated from universities outside Ghana, including China, Ukraine, Russia and Belarus.

The inductees included those who had completed their six and seven-year professional medical and dental programmes from the four medical and dentistry schools in Ghana, namely University of Ghana Medical School, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, School of Medical Sciences of the University of Cape Coast to name a few. During the ceremony, the new medical doctors and dentists were joined by their family members, friends and loved ones.

While addressing the ceremony, Professor P K Nyame, Chairman of the Medical and Dental Council, who administered the Hippocratic Oath to the inductees, opined that their induction was an injection of human resource into Ghana's health system, where the doctor/patient ratio stood at about 1:4,500.

"We are making progress by way of numbers, compared to about 10 years ago which was about 1:10,000," Nyame said, but added that the current ratio was still far from the World Health Organization recommendation of 1:500, as reported by Graphic Online.

The Professor told the new doctors and dentists that in today's era of social media where there was an unbridled flow of information, the patient should not be made the subject of social gossip, urging that, "information about them must be treated in confidence even when they have died." He also advised them to treat their peers and superiors with respect, guard against spreading rumours and making bad reports about one another for personal gains.

He further expressed the hope that stakeholders would work together to achieve the WHO recommendation. He also advised the inductees to be mindful of the ethics of their profession and take a keen interest in the well-being of their patients.