The Deputy Regional Minister for Ashanti, Mr Andy Osei Okrah has disclosed government’s intent of adding about 10 colleges of education for the training of midwives and nursing assistants across the country.
This, he stressed was a move by the Mahama Administration to ensure more avenues were created for the enrollment of people wanting to pursue midwifery or nursing as a professional career.
Addressing the management, staff and graduating students at the Presbyterian Nursing and Midwifery Training School at Agogo in the Asante-Akim North District, the Deputy Minister noted government’s desire to have more people offering the courses in sciences.
”It is government’s desire to see more students offering courses in the sciences so as to respond to the increasing demand in the health sector of our economy”, Mr Okrah noted.
STRATEGY:
According to the Deputy Minister, government was planning a total transformation of the training and studies at the Nursing and Midwifery Schools.
Part of this plan, he added was to build more colleges of nursing across the country with each region having one for a start.
The government, the Deputy Minister intimated was also vigorously pursuing the regime where obsolete tools and equipment for laboratory work were replaced with modern ones.
As a sign of government’s commitment, Mr Okrah promised the Presbyterian School hundred (100)bags of cement to aid them to expand its infrastructure which is currently being overstretched for lack of space.
PRINCIPAL:
Speaking to the Ghanaian Observer Newspaper, Mrs Florence Gyang Annan, Principal of the School intimated the importance of the nursing and midwifery profession, adding many students had gone on from the classroom to bring relief to patients as well as pregnant mothers they oversee at the hospitals and clinics.
Established in the year 1937, the Headmistress recalled the excellent results the Presbyterian nursing school had chalked from their early days including the recent one which it had 96 percent pass rate with 4percent having been referred for having low marks.
According to her, out of the 122 students they presented for the Council Exams, 117 passed with excellence with five(5) candidates having to be referred for the re-sit of the exams.
With the students far outliving the small lecture halls at the school, the headmistress called on government to invest more into infrastructure and equipment for study in such sensitive schools so as to churn out better practitioners and professionals after school.