Ignore gov’t; stick to Roadmap – GMA to members

The Ghana Medical Association (GMA) has called on all its members to “stick to the roadmap; continue to attend to only in-patients while withdrawing out-patients and emergency services” despite the Health Minister’s order for all doctors to return to work by Thursday, August 20, 2015.
The Health Minister, Alex Segbefia at a press conference on Tuesday directed all heads of government health centers to ensure that their facilities resumed the provision of full range of health services by Wednesday, August 19, 2015.
He also directed that effective Thursday, 20th August, 2015 all members of GMA who have not reported and assumed full duty shall be considered as being on strike and in clear breach of the Labour Act.
Doctors have been on strike demanding a codified condition of service document.
To mitigate impact of the strike, government has announced that it secured the services of some 177 doctors from Cuba who would soon arrive in Ghana to support health care.
However, a statement from the GMA signed by its President, Dr Kwabena Opoku-Adusei and General Secretary, Dr Frank Serebour questioned the rationale behind the decision to employ doctors from Cuba, when “these Cuban doctors are not engaged for free.”
“The irony of the matter is that they are indeed better paid than their Ghanaian counterparts and are engaged under proper conditions of service, which include fully furnished accommodation, free utilities, fuel, free health care and an air ticket to travel once a year back home to visit their families,” the statement said, further asking, “why is the Ghanaian doctor discriminated against even in his country by our own government?”
The statement also called on all doctors in quasi government institutions not to allow “the minister to use them as bargaining chips in this fight for conditions of service”.
It said “as much as they may be working in institutions that make it somehow difficult for them to join this ongoing action by their colleagues in the public sector, it is important for all of us to note that our profession is under siege and we must rise up to defend it.”
The statement concluded by urging all doctors not to be intimidated by threats from some quarters, saying, they “should not in anyway water down our resolve in seeking for a proper documented and negotiated conditions of service.