President of the Society of Family Physicians of Ghana (SOFPOG), Dr Emmanuel Ati wants government to include family medicine in the training of House Officers.

He believes Ghana’s primary care stands to lose with the exclusion.

Traditional House Officers are trained in obstetrics and gynaecology, internal medicine, surgery among others.

Speaking at the 2021 Annual General Meeting of the SOFPOG he called on stakeholders to integrate family medicine rotation into their training.

“Housemen don’t go through training in family medicine. Most of them are posted to medical facilities without family medicine experience.

“We want stakeholders to facilitate the process where House Officers pass through family medicine training so that their impact will be felt at the primary care level.

“This will enable newly qualified medical officers practicing in primary care to be better able to deal with the unique set of challenges that come with the terrain and also whip up their interest in the field of family medicine,” he said.

Faculty chair of family medicine at the Ghana College of Physicians and surgeons, Dr. Akye Essuman, revealed that as part of efforts to train more family physicians, the college has been engaged in recruiting other supervisors for fellows-in-training.

“We’re very few on the ground but we’re finding a way to recruit other faculty members from other specialties whose work is related to the family medicine to facilitate training of fellows.

“When fellows are trained, they can also help in the training of members,” he is optimistic.