The Ghana Health Service (GHS) has painted a gloomy picture of the country's health sector with the projection of a 1,706 and 11,696 shortfall of medical doctors and professional nurses, respectively by 2010. Based on assessment from admissions and productions from the two teaching hospitals it is clear that the 3,732 medical doctors needed in the various health facilities nationwide by 2010 cannot be met, Dr. George Amofa, Deputy Director of GHS has said. Delivering a paper on the topic: "Promoting Health for All - The Challenges," at the New Year School in Accra on Sunday, Dr. Amofa cited manpower in terms of adequacy in numbers, skill mix and distribution as the major challenge within the health sector noting that the current ratio of one doctor to 1,090 people one nurse to 1,538 and one pharmacist to 13,373 is not the best for the sector. He said that “37.6 per cent of the health sector workforce falls within the age group of 40 and 50 with 33.9 per cent within the age group of 50 and 60," adding that 80 per cent of the 33.9 constitutes medical assistants and midwives. He noted that Ghana's geographical location in the tropics also creates a condition favourable for the "manufacture of all types of vectors and disease" while global village is also posing serious challenge to health in Ghana. The estimated per capita health expenditure of 40 dollars per individual in 2015 for scaling up health interventions to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) he said may not be achieved in the country. He explained that while the MDGs prescribed 21 dollars expenditure for an individual for the year 2007, Ghana was around 12.3 dollars, adding "a best realistic assessment of potential available resources to the health sector for 2015 is estimated around 16.5 dollars" in Ghana which is below the 40 dollars. Dr Amofa also observed that, despite the galaxy of very skillful health workforce, "we have to admit that there has been laxity and poor planning and management of health service, especially at the district level where the action is. "There is corruption and mismanagement of resources by a few of our staff. More importantly, the attitude of our staff leaves much to be desired and a hindrance to promoting health for all," he said. In spite of the numerous challenges, he said there has been progress in the health sector in terms of infrastructure and access to quality health care, saying "we have done quite reasonably well". "Major successes, have been chalked especially in areas controlling childhood vaccine, preventable diseases and epidemic detection and response," he added. He said the service is working hard to ensure that the gap which is likely to be created by 2010 is forestalled, adding that the establishment of the College of Surgeons and Physicians is a major breakthrough for the training of more professionals and check the brain drain of medical doctors. The move by the University for Development Studies and University of Cape Coast to train medical professionals, he said would also be another step to solve the problem of manpower in the health sector is incentives like salary enhancement and vehicles given to medical professionals. Source: The Ghanaian Times