Unemployed allied health professionals engaged in ongoing tracing of people who have had contacts with persons with the deadly coronavirus in the country have threatened to withdraw from the exercise if government does not employ them.
They claimed in a statement that government has given financial clearance to the Health Ministry to employ some nurses and midwives on the back of the coronavirus outbreak but without them being considered.
That, they indicated, “is the first time nurses and midwives are being processed for posting without allied health professionals”.
Numbering 1,335, the allied health professionals who were trained with public funds in 2017/2018 are made up of health information graduates, disease control, field technicians, prosthetics and orthotics, physiotherapists and medical laboratory technicians.
A total of 560 have been engaged for the contact training exercise ongoing across the country.
“Our attention has been drawn to a letter with reference number MOH/HR/IT/005 from the Ministry of Health indicating that, nurses and midwives has been given financial clearance by the Ministry of Finance leaving behind Allied health professionals who heeded to the calls of the President and Ghana Health service to aid in the contact tracing of COVID-19 patients,” they said in the statement.
They expressed shock at the decision by government.
They have thus given government one week ultimatum to address their concerns or risk their services which will cause a big blow to the contact training exercise being done with the view to stopping the spread of covid-19.
“A unanimous decision has been made, and members of the said group have given the ministry of health a week ultimatum starting from 08/04/2020 to 15/04/2020 to address our concerns or we will withdraw our members (560 members) from the contact tracing teams,” they said.
By 3news.com|Ghana