Deputy Spokesperson for Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia’s presidential campaign, Dr. Ekua Amoakoh, says Ghana must explore structured international partnerships to address the rising number of unemployed nurses, noting that the country trains about 55,000 nurses each year, far more than the health system can absorb.
Speaking on the AM Show on JoyNews, she said the issue of exporting Ghana’s trained nurses has long been of personal and policy interest to her and was part of the campaign’s discussions during the last election.
“So this is actually one of the things that has been dear to my heart. I spoke about it when going to the election last year. It was something that we were hoping to continue and do on a larger scale.”
Her comments come amid Ghana and the Bahamas signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to recruit teachers and nurses.
Dr. Amoakoh noted that the country produces more nurses than the health system can employ annually, a situation that demands innovative solutions.
“The truth is in this country, we produce a lot more nurses than our system is able to absorb.
We produce about 55,000 nurses every year, and one might think that that is not a huge number but the government payroll is not able to accommodate all of these people.
And so this decision to export that very valuable human resource is something that has been on the books and has been on the table for a very long time,” she said.
She further revealed that the idea of facilitating international recruitment for Ghanaian nurses was first explored in 2024 under the then Minister of Health, Dr. Okoe Boye.
“In fact, we started in 2024 under the former Minister of Health, Okoe Boye, who was in talks with Jamaica, Germany, and the UK to recruit Ghanaian nurses. And I think nurses in this country get some kind of bad reputation from our own people, but outside the country, they have a very good reputation as being very good at their jobs.
So you can see a lot of our young nurses finding ways for themselves to migrate to the UK, and they are well welcomed with open arms,” she stated.
Dr. Amoakoh stressed that Ghana must adopt a structured system similar to that of Cuba, where trained professionals are allowed to work abroad for a few years and return home, creating room for new cohorts to follow.
“So it’s definitely something that the country should take advantage of and do, and do it in such a way that we can send them back; you are there for about five years. The government gets some foreign exchange when you come back, and a new set goes—that is what they do in Cuba,” she explained.
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