In the first quarter of 2023, more than 300 nurses in the Ashanti Region left the Ghana Health Service (GHS) in search of better prospects abroad.
Authorities from the region’s numerous healthcare facilities are urging the government to find a long-term solution to the problem since it is having a negative influence on the delivery of healthcare there.
The Ghana Health Service’s Ashanti Regional Director, Dr. Emmanuel Tinkorang, bemoaned the situation and stated that according to their data, 304 health professionals, including physicians and nurses, have requested leave without pay as of right now.
The majority of these people, according to additional investigations by the directorate, have already left the country in search of better employment possibilities to raise their standard of living.
In an interview about the detrimental effects of nurses leaving their jobs to work abroad, Dr. Emmanuel Tinkorang stated, “When we did the analysis for the first quarter of 2023, we realized that about 304 applied for leave without pay which means that they have left the service, but additional information indicates that most of them have left the country and these are very skilled health workers with the right knowledge, attitude, and skill to do the job, but it s a shame that they have left the country.
This is concerning because we need these workers to maintain the nation’s healthcare infrastructure, which the government is providing well. However, he continued, “How can we maintain this system if our people are fleeing the nation?
Due to terrible working conditions—particularly low pay—Ghanaian nurses have been fleeing to Europe and North America in large numbers over the past few years.
When workers were subjected to inflation and a plethora of taxes in 2022, there was a wild rush for jobs abroad.
In a recent interview with BBC, Howard Catton, the head of the International Council of Nurses (ICN) in the UK, claimed that many specialized nurses had left the West African nation for positions that paid better abroad, with more than 1,200 Ghanaian nurses expected to join the UK’s nursing register in 2022.
