The Minister of Health, Kwabena Mintah Akandoh, says government will sponsor not less than 15 nursing teachers to upgrade themselves in the bid to support their career development.
The Minister gave the assurance during a ceremony to present to him the prestigious 2025 Aster Guardians Global Nursing Award by the awardee madam Naomi Ohene Oti.
Naomi Oyoe Ohene Oti, a Ghanaian Oncology Nurse Specialist and Head of Nursing at the National Radiotherapy Oncology and Nuclear Medicine Centre, Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, won the prestigious Aster Guardians Global Nursing Award 2025, receiving a prize of USD 250,000 at a grand ceremony held in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
She emerged winner from a highly competitive pool of over 105,000 global nominees.
In the company of some heads of institutions, she presented the award to the Health Minister Kwabena Mintah Akandoh.
“I am here to say thank you to government for the support. And to present the award to you as the Health Minister.”
The Minister used the occasion to outline government’s plans to improve upon nursing services in the country.
“We take notice that nurses are very important. In fact, there are places you will go and there are no doctors but nurses are available. We have reduced their fees to about half of what they paid last year. Due to the no-fee stress [policy], this year they are paying just about GHC3,000,” he stated.
He added that, “this year we are looking at sponsoring not less than 15 tutors upgrading them.”
The Minister also added that government is working to reduce the migration of nurses from Ghana to other countries. “We are also looking at how we can manage the migration.”
He also outlined the government’s efforts to regularise all the nurses who have been home since completion of their training, and how plans are being advanced to enroll those who were recruited after the 2024 election without due process.
“There are a lot of them who have completed and they are at home. You remember when we took over, there was a policy that all those employed after the elections must go home. But we ensured it didn’t affect the health sector.so we took onboard not less than 13k without physical space.
“Now by the grace of God about 7k have been put on the payroll and we are trying to put everybody on the payroll. Government is now trying to manage the migration where will deal with it government to government. Very soon we are going to train a lot of specialist,” he explained.
An amount of 50,000 cedis was promised the nurse by the minister to enable her cut down some expenses incurred during the process.
