Doctors and nurses serving in remote communities in the country are going to benefit from more professional enhancement opportunities than their counterparts in the urban areas. This is one of the mechanisms adopted by the Ministry of Health to encourage health professionals to accept posting to rural communities. The Minister of Health, Dr Benjamin Kunbour, who announced this, said already some doctors and nurses serving in rural Ghana had been selected to take part in the upcoming World Health Assembly to expose them to the world. He said even though that was not the ultimate solution to the problem of health professionals refusing posting to the hinterlands, it was one of the ways of motivating them to stay and work in those communities. "One of the reasons some of the professionals do not want to work in rural areas is that they fear that when they are in these areas, such opportunities bypass them and this affects their career development," the minister explained. Dr Kunbour was speaking at the closing ceremony of a training programme for lecturers and students of the School of Medicine and Health Sciences of the University for Development Studies (UDS) in Tamale. The training sought to enhance their capacity to implement the problem-based learning (PBL) methodology in the training of medical professionals and the delivery of health care. The training was sponsored by the Dutch government, through the Netherlands Organisation for International Co-operation in Higher Education (NUFFIC). The Northern Regional Minister, Mr Moses Bukari Mabengba; the Chairman of the UDS Governing Council, Dr Abdulai Baba Salifu; the acting Vice-Chancellor of the UDS, Prof Kaku Sagary Nokoe, and the Chief Executive Officer of the Tamale Teaching Hospital (TTH), Dr Ken Sagoe, were among the dignitaries who graced the occasion. Dr Kunbour said the government would soon fashion out a more comprehensive scheme to attract health professionals to serve in deprived communities. "But while we do these, we will take gradual steps to also improve the infrastructure of health institutions in the country, as is being done to the TTH," he said. The minister challenged doctors to transform medical practice in the country to suit the socio-economic experiences pertaining here. According to him, medical professionals currently offered solutions that had been designed by foreign countries and tailored to suit their needs. "If you ask a patient to take a drug three times a day after heavy meals and the person cannot even afford two meals a day, then you make it virtually impossible for the person to recover," he observed adding that doctors must offer solutions that were in synchrony with the environment they found themselves. He said that was the crux of the PBL learning and practice method which enabled professionals to carve out solutions based on the nature of the problem. Source: Daily Graphic