The Ghana Health Service has reiterated the Youth Employment Agency’s (YEA) assurances that High School graduates to be recruited to assist in Community Health-based Planning Services (CHPS) compounds will not replace trained health professionals.
The Service’s Director General, Dr. Patrick Kuma-Aboagye, said this system has been in place since 2016 and is geared toward community engagement, not clinical work.
“What this serves to do is not place them in CHPS compounds but create that link… between the community and the CHPS compound,” he explained on the Citi Breakfast Show.
“It is the community that is where the recruitment will come from so that they understand their people and are more familiar with them,” he added.
Dr. Kuma-Aboagye further admitted that there may have been lapses in the earlier communication on the endeavour.
“The one who spoke from YEA made a general statement because he is not a health worker.”
Also on the Citi Breakfast Show, the YEA head of Corporate Affairs, Emmanuel Kwasi Afriyie, noted that his outfit was subject to the Ghana Health Service despite its coordination of the project.
“We are working under the auspices of the Ghana Health Service, and we are not masters of our own,” he said.
“What they [recruits] are supposed to do is support the provision of primary health care in rural communities. That is where our focus is,” Mr. Afriyie added.
