The Ghana Registered Nurses and Midwives Association has marked this year’s International Women’s Day with a call on stakeholders to inspire the inclusion of nurses, midwives, and other female health professionals.
Speaking to the media on the essence of the commemoration, the guest speaker for the occasion, Madam Oye Bampoe Addo, addressed some issues that hinder women professionals in the health care sector.
She stated that although successive governments have institutionalised lots of policies to enable the girl child to go to school and become a great person in life, the number of females who take up math and science courses in universities and other tertiary institutions remains low, according to data.
Madam Bampoe Addo called on the government to, as a matter of urgency, fix the poor salaries and conditions of service of Ghanaian nurses and midwives to prevent them from leaving Ghana to seek greener pastures abroad.
According to her, a time is coming when the country will battle with the shortage of nurses and doctors in the country, considering their present salary structure.
“We spend a lot of money on training health care practitioners and must therefore do everything possible to keep them and not lose them to countries abroad, such as the USA, UK, and Canada. Autralia and others,” she said.
She furthered that if the salaries of such individuals are well cared for, it is just a handful of them who would have an interest in living and working outside the shores of Ghana.
She also called for the institutionalisation and operation of clinical psychologists in districts and other hospitals in the country to check and diagnose women and girls whose rights and freedoms are being abused.
The former MP criticised parliament’s reduced number of women and called on political parties to put in place mechanisms to increase the representation of women by ensuring women candidates win internal primaries in order to contest general elections.
“If you consider the number of women in parliament, you will realise that the numbers are low, and what the political parties can do is that they are supposed to go beyond the 50 percent fee they slash from the actual money the women standing for parliamentary candidates are made to pay,” she furthered.
She said women should also be promoted to participate in the District Assembly elections as well as the Unit Committee elections in the country to help prevent women from assuming further leadership positions in the near future.
Madam Bampoe Addo used the opportunity to commend the NDC and its flagbearer, John Mahama, for retaining Prof. Naana Jane Opoku Agyemang as the party’s running mate for the December election.
“Today is a joyful day for me because NDC John Dramani Mahama has appointed or nominated his running mate, who is in the person of Professor Jane Naana Opoku Agyemang, former minister of education, former vice chancellor of the University of Cape Coast, and Chancellor of the African University for Women,” she said.
For her part, Dr. Olivia Agyekumwaa Boateng, Director of the Tobacco and Substances Abuse Directorate of the Food and Drugs Authority, said the day was a global day set aside to check the measures that have been put in place by authorities and governments to determine how far women from all walks of life have come.
She said that after coming together and discussing the measures that have been put in place for women to thrive in all spheres of society, they have realised that a lot has been achieved by most women and that more has to be done to ensure that women aspire more.
“We have enacted lots of laws that are aimed at protecting women against being abused or violated. With education, we now understand that enrolment has been shared equally, 50 for women and 50 for men, unlike before when most women couldn’t get the opportunity to be enrolled in professions of their choice,” she disclosed.
She also admonished women leaders, particularly those in the health sector, to mentor the younger ones who work under them, adding that they should not see them as threats but rather offer them all the needed advice and support to help them grow too.
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