THE Northern Region, apart from being the largest in the country, is also among the most deprived areas. It lags behind in many sectors of development including health.
The region, which occupies 70,000 square kilometres and about 29 per cent of the total land mass in the country with 20 administrative districts, is faced with numerous challenges.
Indeed, one sector that continues to suffer some drawbacks in the area is health.
The sector is beset with difficulties ranging from lack of health infrastructural facilities and personnel, including doctors, inadequate equipment and drugs, in the deprived districts and communities in the region.
Apart from the unavailability of social amenities and incentives to attract the needed manpower, most of the roads leading to the districts, which are very far apart, are simply not motorable.
A greater part of the region is also located within the Volta River basin and subject to periodic flooding.
Precious lives are, therefore, lost every day as health centres and ambulances in the districts are not enough to transport patients with severe illnesses to the referral hospital in Tamale, which has its own problems to contend with.
As a necessity, distressed patients always have to resort to traditional medication some of which unfortunately hasten them to their graves.
According to the Northern Regional Director of Health Services, Dr Akwasi Twumasi, the antenatal care in the area stands at 18 per cent, which is far lower than the national average of 47 per cent.
‘‘Skilled attendant at delivery is very disheartening. With the national average of 47 per cent, we in the region are performing at 18 per cent while our infant mortality rate of 154/1,000 is only better than that of the Upper West Region,’’ he stated.
Addressing delegates at the 16th annual District Directors of Health Services Group Conference in Tamale.
Dr Twumasi stated that malaria remained the highest cause of hospitalisation and death among children in the area, as only seven per cent of children slept under insecticide treated mosquito nets.
The conference was on the theme: “Strengthening Sub-districts. Systems for Effective Implementation of the High Impact Rapid Delivery (HIRD) towards achieving MDG 4 and 5’.’
He also stated that household consumption of iodinated salt was below 10 per cent with 35 per cent of children being underweight while nearly 70 per cent of them had moderate to severe anaemia in the region, according to the demographic and health survey of 2003.
‘‘All these figures are compounded by the high levels of illiteracy and especially low female enrolment in our schools,’’ Dr Twumasi noted, adding that the gloomy situation could also be attributed to the intermittent ethnic, chieftaincy and religious conflicts in the region over the years.
All is not, however, lost as the Northern Regional Minister, Alhaji Mustapha Ali Idris, announced that the Ministry of Health intended to establish polyclinics in some of the deprived districts in the region.
The beneficiary districts are Chereponi, Kpandai, Janga, Buipe, Tatale and Daboya.
According to the minister, the strategies of improving human capital and strengthening the role of the private sector could help in the growth of the health sector.
‘‘This is because it is only a healthy population that can bring about improved productivity, increased GDP and thus overall economic growth to give meaning to the adage that, a healthy population is a wealthy population,’’ Alhaji Idris stated.
The National Chairman of the DDHS Group, Dr James Sarkodie, observed that the challenges facing the health sector ‘‘are near crisis level”.
He also mentioned lack of funding, transport, human resource, accommodation, infrastructure and logistics as the bane of the sector in the country.
Dr Sarkodie made it clear that ‘‘however equip as we may be with knowledge, plans and strategies to address health issues, this will have little impact if the challenges confronting the health service operational level today is not tackled with all the seriousness it deserves”.
In a speech read on his behalf, the Minister of Health, Major Courage Quashigah (retd), capped it all when he stated that ‘‘there is no doubt that we need a new direction if as a ministry and a nation, we are to achieve our collective vision; that calls for a paradigm shift from curative to health promotion and the adherence to principles of primary health care’’.
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