Nurses in the Chereponi District of the North East region are calling on the Ghana Health Service (GHS) to deploy nurses to the district to augment the shortfall of staff in the district.

According to the nurses there, the current shortage of staff in the district is having a toll on the few who are currently at post.

Assistant District Secretary of the Ghana Registered Nurses and Midwives Association, Mahamudu Nafah Ibrahim said only 80 nurses are at post in the district.

Speaking to Joy News, he said out of the 34 nurses posted to the district this year only three reported with the remaining 31 allegedly being reposted to other areas.

He said this is posing a threat to proper healthcare delivery in the area.

 “This has led to our situation becoming more and more difficult because in total we have about 125 nurses in the district. Out of this 125, approximately 30 of these people are currently in school.”

“Thus leaving us with approximately 80 nurses in the district. And these 80 nurses are supposed to man about 14 health facilities which include a district hospital,” he explained.

Citing the district hospital which serves as a referral centre for the various health centres in the area, Mr Ibrahim said the emergency unit is currently being manned by only one nurse, questioning how an emergency unit can be run by a single nurse.

“When you come to the hospital, for instance, the hospital runs various services including specialist services in eye, EMT, psychiatry and other general services that we find in all other hospitals.

“But then you come to the hospital and you go to a unit like the Emergency ward and you’ll find only one nurse on duty. How can an emergency ward have only one nurse on duty?”

He explained that the situation is not alien to other sub-district health facilities as all health facilities including CHP compounds are short-staffed.

“This cuts across, if you go to the sub-district level, where we have the health centres and CHPS compounds, they face the same problem.”

He appealed to the powers that be to listen to their pleas, failure to do so he said, will call for various protest actions

“We are crying out for the world to hear us, and the community to hear us so that we will be able to get the powers that be to listen to us and come to our aid.

“In doing this we’re also saying that we have reached levels that we can’t bear anymore, and if they don’t come to our aid to resolve these challenges, we’d be forced to start taking protest actions.”