The Western Regional Health Directorate, has initiated steps to set up a Regional Research Unit to facilitate clinical excellence and provide evidence for critical medical decision- making. The Regional Minister, Mr Paul Evans Aidoo, made this known in a speech read on his behalf, on Wednesday, at the opening of the 8th Annual General Conference of the Medical Superintendents' Group (MSG) at Busua. According to him, the Efia-Nkwanta Regional Hospital, being the major referral centre in the region, is poorly equipped for adequate medical research. The three-day conference was on the theme: "Research and Medical Practice, Capacity Building in our Hospitals." Mr Aidoo said inadequate infrastructure and lack of key personnel, including pathologists hinder clinical medical research. "New discoveries and expansion of medical frontiers could only be achieved with a well strategize medical research," he said. Mr Aidoo said critical areas that need special attention are the re-emergence of certain tropical diseases such as yaws, filariasis, which abound in the Ahanta West District and guinea worm. He also listed the high disease burden of malaria, HIV/AIDS, hypertension, diabetes, soaring maternal and infant mortality and morbidity as well as health care financing improvement options and high technology development as other areas of focus. Mr Aidoo urged the conference to examine the issue of ethics, which relates to patients privacy and consent in medical research. Dr George Acquaye, President of MSG, said there is the need for the expansion of the country's health facilities to avoid over crowding of patients. He said there is the need to regularly replace equipments at the facilities to increase efficiency and to motivate health workers to attend to patients. Dr Acquaye spoke of the delay in reimbursing health facilities under the National Health Service Insurance Scheme. He asked members of the group to publish their research works in the Ghana Medical Journal and other medium and also read other study findings. Dr Linda Vanotoo, a medical superintendent noted that health delivery in the region has to change because of the discovery of oil and asked the conference to consider the issue. She noted that organizational barriers and lack of requisite number of personnel and technical know-how at the medical centres could be overcome when the officials use guidelines that are developed by experts or availing themselves of competency based training and putting in structures that would help them to use results obtained from research. Source: GNA