Kwaku Agyeman-Manu, the Minister of Health, is dissatisfied with what he describes as an increasing number of lawsuits filed against health professionals, particularly doctors, for alleged poor service delivery and medical negligence at some facilities in the country.
The Minister made the remarks while addressing senior managers of the Ghana Health Service at a meeting in Kumasi.
He revealed that his office had received letters from the Attorney General’s office of people suing medical practitioners over some services they rendered.
“What I’m seeing in the Ministry are issues of litigations. For the past few weeks, almost every week, at least we get one letter from the Attorney General’s office. Somebody has sued a staff or doctor with problems with care or service delivery, and they want us to come out with information to go to court. Earlier on, when I came, the issues were not that much, but it’s becoming very common”.
“So what is it? Deliberate efforts to try to go to court? Or for us to go to court? Have we forgotten how we were trained to be professionals? Negligence or what’s happening? Since you are senior managers of care of what we do in health, discuss how these court matters can be resolved”.
He also charged health-care providers with ensuring that the National Health Insurance Policy achieves its intended goal.
“The poor women in the rural areas who do not have money to pay for service, please begin to think of them as well. My plea is that NHIS delays, but why do we extort monies from the poor patients? You understand what catastrophic expenditures are,” the Health Minister complained.
By: Rainbowradioonline.com/Ghana
