President Akufo-Addo has charged the University of Ghana Medical School (UGMS) to leverage available teaching and learning technologies in order to increase student access to medical education in Ghana.
In his special guest of honour address at the anniversary lecture to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the University of Ghana Medical School under the theme; “Building on 60 Years of Quality Medical Education: The Role of Technology”, Akufo-Addo said information and communication technology (ICT) offers great avenues through which medical students and all other students can be educated.
“It is time to deliberate on how best we can use technology to reach out to students across the country so that we do not have to bring all of them to Accra or the few medical schools we have in the country to impart knowledge to them”.
“Virtual reality is increasingly becoming popular in the training of medical professionals because it allows for medical professional skills education, assessment, standardization and knowledge sharing for better health care infrastructure,” Akufo-Addo said.
He added: “Virtual reality in addition to other digital transformation products provides the space for the innovative ideas we need to adopt in the training of our medical students. The adoption of these technologies will require a fundamental rethink of how we deliver medical education.
“…We need to take a second look at the curriculum of medical education in view of the digital revolution. I thus encourage the Ministries of Education and Health to work together to leverage on technology to increase access to the many students who hitherto, have been denied the opportunity to follow their passion of studying medicine because of insufficient facilities and faculty.”
UGMS infrastructure
On the infrastructure challenges of the UGMS, President Akufo-Addo indicated that he is aware of the state of the 60-year-old buildings in which the school is housed.
He called on the three stakeholder institutions, that is the Education and Health Ministries as well as the university itself to come up with the phase lifting plan for the school’s infrastructure.
“The university, ministry of Health and the Ministry of Education should come up with a workable plan for the expansion of the medical school and I assure you that government will provide the necessary support for it,” the President said.
Postings of doctors
Before he concluded his address, President Akufo-Addo took advantage of the opportunity to be among actors in the medical space of the country and appealed to them to accept postings to all regions of the country in order to arrest the doctor-dentist population radio challenge in the country.
“The doctor dentist population ratio in our country still remains unsatisfactory after 65 years of nationhood. We currently do not have the right numbers of doctors, dentists and health care professionals with the right mix of skills and expertise in our regions, districts and deprived communities, especially, for the newly created regions and districts,” the President noted.
To this end, President Akufo-Addo urged doctors in the country to follow the example of their forebears such as Dr Charles Essman, Dr Evans Anful and their likes to accept postings to all parts of the country in their early years.
“They did so because they believed that the hypocritic oath they took imposed a duty on them to offer their services especially, to the neediest. It was their work that help build our national health system for which we are all benefitting. I am therefore appealing to you as passionately as I can, to accept postings to accredited regional and districts hospitals where your services are needed most,” he said.
Dealing with shortcomings
Dr Anarfi Asamoa-Baah, former deputy director of the World Health Organization (WHO), presenting the anniversary lecture interspersed with an interesting sense of humour, noted that there is the need to take decisive steps to deal with the shortcomings of the University of Ghana Medical School.
The Medical school he says has so far trained some 4,510 doctors. However, he believes that the school could have easily trained double that number but for the infrastructure limitation, the school is facing just like the Ghana School of Law.
The retention of faculty according to Dr Asamoa-Baah, is another major issue that the UGMS has to deal with. He noted in this regard that, “as long as the take-home pay of the doctor does not take him or her home, they will leave home”.
Financing of the UGMS currently, Dr Asamoa-Baah observed, is an existential threat to the growth of the institution.
“The school started with very generous grants from President Nkrumah, now the school’s main source of income is fees paid by students. When you rely on fee-paying students, that provides some perverse incentives” Dr Asamoa-Baah said.
The UGMS
The idea to establish a Medical School in Ghana was conceived in 1919 when the Korle-Bu Hospital was built by the then Governor of the Gold Coast, Sir Frederick Gordon Guggisberg.
It was however shelved when the Governor left office. The idea was revived in 1951 when, at a joint request by the Government and the University College of the Gold Coast, a delegation visited from the University of London to draw up a scheme and to specify staffing and facilities needed for a full-scale Medical School.
A year later, a Commission appointed by the Government to enquire into the health needs of the Gold Coast recommended an indefinite postponement of the establishment of the Medical School, a recommendation that was accepted by the Government in 1952.
Following acceptance of the recommendations by the Government, a Medical School consultant team, under the USAID in 1962 recommended further that the National Medical and Health Training Centre should be established with the following components when fully developed.
The school started almost entirely with Ghanaians. By the end of the first year, permission had been given to recruit expatriate staff to augment the efforts of the local staff.
By December 1968, the Ghana Medical School had become a semi-autonomous institution within the University of Ghana with academic functions similar to those of any faculty in the University.
Its new name then became the University of Ghana Medical School. It was given its own Executive Council and a School Board. It also had its own self-accounting administration which reported to the School Board and the Executive Council.
UGMS future goals
The UGMS going forward is expected to expand to take in more students.
In pursuance of this objective, the school hopes to embark on the following projects:
First, the establishment of a School of Biomedical Sciences with the capability to train Preclinical students for all Medical schools in the country.
Second, is the establishment of a state-of-the-art Teaching Hospital at Legon that is expected to be a centre of excellence for the training of doctors as well as a leader in service delivery.
Third, the construction of skills and simulated laboratories to aid in coping with increased student numbers.
Fourth, to extend the use of peripheral hospitals for the training of clinical students.
Lastly, to introduce distance learning and practice as soon as practicable. The UGMS also plans to is expand its research portfolio.
Wilberforce Asare
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