Cuba to Supply Ghana With 20 Medical Specialists

By Abeduwaa Lucy Appiah And Frederick Gadese-Mensah

The Ministry of Health (MoH) yesterday renewed a contract with the Cuban government to supply Ghana with 20 medical specialists for the next two years.

The contract is to provide health professionals to the various health facilities in the country to address the deficit of doctors in the health sector.

The specialists include cardiologists, anaesthesiologists, pathologists oncologists and neurologists, among others.

The Minister of Health, Kwaku Agyemang-Manu, speaking at the contract signing in Accra said, medical doctors in the country were not sufficient in some specialised areas, hence the need for the supply of Cuban doctors to complement the effort of Ghanaian doctors.

Mr Agyemang-Manu observed that the practice of medicine had become complex with new specialisations, adding that, "in our system we might have a lot of medical doctors and specialists, but there are certain skill areas that we still find ourselves wanting."

He said the Cuban doctors would be distributed across the country to improve quality of healthcare delivery.

The Ambassador of Cuba, Pedro Luis Despaigne Gonzalez, said the contract would not only provide the country with doctors, but offer them the opportunity to develop their own human resource.

He expressed the commitment of his country to train their Ghanaian counterparts to deliver first class medical services to the people, noting that more than 2,000 Cuban doctors had worked in Ghana for the past 36 years, with most of them sent to rural areas.

"Currently, 300 out of the 3,000 Ghanaian students in Cuba are studying medicine and about 200 of them would graduate in July," he said.

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