SHOCKING: ¢740bn to train 250 doctors

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Parent Category: Education & Training

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Created on Wednesday, 23 May 2012 00:00

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SHOCKING: ¢740bn to train 250 doctors

The New Patriotic Party (NPP)has said that it will put to shame all doubting Thomases who think the party cannot execute the proposed Inner City Development Fund popularly referred to as the ‘Zongo’ fund when voted to power.

Documents available to the New Statesman indicate that the Ghanaian taxpayer is spending a whopping GH¢74.3 million (¢743 billion) to train 200 senior high school graduates and 50 specialists who left the shores of Ghana for Cuba last week.

This development has caught experts in the medical field dumb-founded and shocked at what they describe as “misplaced priorities” of the Mills-Mahama administration, as GH¢74.3 million could have been used to train over 2,000 doctors in Ghana.

A cabinet memo from then Minister for Health Joseph Yieleh Chireh dated August 2011 and titled “Funding the services of the Cuban Medical Brigade under the revised Ghana-Cuba Medical Cooperation” makes this startling revelation.

The cabinet memo explained that “the budget for the basic training of doctors and of specialists works out to GH¢74,344,960 for the period of the Medical Cooperation” with “an amount of GH¢14,498,960” needed for the first year, 2012.

According to the Minister of Health, the cost of training a single senior high school graduate in Cuba amounts to GH¢50,660.12 (¢506.6 million) a year, translating into GH¢303,960 (¢303.96 million) per head for the entire six-year period.

“For the 200 students that are proposed for training in Cuba, this will work out to GH¢10,132,024.00) for each year. For the six years of training, this works out to GH¢60,792,144.00. The cost of training a specialist in Cuba is about GH¢48,189.12 per annum per student. For the 50 proposed [specialists] for training, this works out to GH¢9,637,824 for four years”.

However, checks made by the New Statesman at the University of Ghana Medical School indicate that the cost of training a single doctor for a year would not exceed GH¢5,000, as tuition fee for a student at the UGMS amounts to GH¢1,000 a year, inclusive of hostel fees.

Thus the cost of training 200 senior high school graduates for a period of six years at the University of Ghana Medical School would amount to GH¢6 million, as opposed to the GH¢60 million the Ghanaian taxpayer is forking out to train a similar number of high school graduates in Cuba. The GH¢60mn that is being used to train 200 doctors could have trained 2000 medical students; now that would have been unprecedented in Ghana’s medical history.

To compensate for the departure of the 50 medical doctors who are to be trained as specialists, the government intends recruiting 300 Cuban doctors at a cost of GH¢14.36 million per annum and GH¢86.16 million for the next six years.

According to the cabinet memo, the benefits for the 300 Cuban doctors include: a return air-ticket each year for annual leave; travel allowance; accommodation and meals at arrival and departure; accommodation at work place; transport for work; utility charges; cost of participation in annual scientific seminar and brigade headquarters expenses, monitoring and evaluation.

By Fiifi Arhin

Source:thestatesmanonline.com