Ghana trains 47 Sierra Leonean nurses, midwives

Forty-seven Sierra Leonean nurses and midwives trained in Ghana have graduated and been inducted as professionals at a ceremony held in Accra on Tuesday, Dec 17, 2019.

The initiative forms part of efforts to beef up the nursing population and enhance healthcare delivery in Sierra Leone after it lost majority of its nurses to the Ebola outbreak in 2014.

Following their graduation and induction by the Board Chair of the Governing Council of the Nurses and Midwifery Council of Ghana, they are expected to return home to serve their country.

The 22 general nurses and 25 midwives were trained by the Nursing and Midwifery Training College in Koforidua and the Korle-Bu Nursing Training College respectively.

They completed a two-year programme in general registered nursing and midwifery and have been awarded diplomas by the University of Cape Coast which is the affiliate university to the nursing and midwifery training institutions.

The nurses were sponsored by Médicins Sans Frontiéres (MSF), an international impartial humanitarian medical organisation.

Ghana’s image

In a message to the nurses, a Deputy Minister of Health, Ms Tina Gifty Mensah, admonished them to be good ambassadors of Ghana and the institutions that trained them.

Ms Mensah further urged them to uphold the highest standards of their profession and continue to build on their professional capacity so as to be relevant to their country.

She commended the training institutions for supporting the government to lend a helping hand to a sister country, emphasising that without them, the training would not have been successful.

In a speech read his behalf, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cape Coast, Professor Joseph Ghartey Ampiah, called on the Ghanaian-trained professionals to adhere strictly to the code of conduct of their trade, while upholding excellence, professionalism in the discharge of their duties at all times.

Excellent training

A medical Director and representative of MSF, Dr Sebastian Spencer, said the organisation chose Ghana as the best place for the nurses to be trained because of its record of excellence in health training.

He reiterated that the gesture was to help Sierra Leone to rebuild a robust and quality healthcare delivery system after it lost most of its health professionals to the 2014 epidemic.

“The training project is part of MSF’s strategy to develop the required level of human resources for a proposed 160–bed paediatric and obstetric hospital in Kenema in Sierra Leone, where more than 200 health workers lost their lives to the Ebola epidemic in 2014,” he said.

Request

He said in 2017, the MSF made a formal request to the Nursing and Midwifery Council to facilitate the training of the nurses and the council followed up to make the initiative a reality and a success.

In a speech on behalf of all the graduates, Mr Morie Fomba, extended their gratitude to all the stakeholders for the life-transforming career opportunity which he was optimistic would enhance healthcare delivery in Sierra Leone.