Hamza Ismaila

Ghana Health Service · Office of the Director-General

Global discussions on health systems strengthening have lately tilted towards increasing investments in human resources for health to address health workforce challenges, especially shortages and employment. Countries have, as a result, increased investments in the health workforce by expanding the production and recruitment of the needed health wo...

Background Ghana has, over the past decades, undergone distinct health workforce policy evolutions, as part of reforms of its public health sector organisation and procedures, to improve the quality of health services, increase access to care, and achieve better health outcomes. Despite the age-old implementation of the health workforce policies ar...

Background and objectives The health workforce (HWF) is at the core of ensuring an efficient, effective and functional health system, but it faces chronic underinvestment. This paper presents a fiscal space analysis of 20 countries in East and Southern Africa to generate sustained evidence-based advocacy for significant and smarter investment in th...

The COVID-19 pandemic had multiple adverse impacts on the health workforce that constrained their capacity to contain and combat the disease. To mitigate the impact of the pandemic on the Ghanaian health workforce, the government implemented a strategy to recruit qualified but unemployed health workers to fill staffing gaps and incentivise all publ...

Background As the global strategies to fight the SARS-COV-2 infection (COVID-19) evolved, response strategies impacted the magnitude and distribution of health-related expenditures. Although the economic consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic has been dire, and its true scale is yet to be ascertained, one key component of the response is the manageme...

The notion of equity in health service delivery has been embodied in several of the Global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), especially the aspiration for universal health coverage (UHC). At the same time, escalating healthcare costs amidst dwindling resources continue to ignite discussions on the efficiency aspect of healthcare delivery at bot...

Background Despite tremendous health workforce efforts which have resulted in increases in the density of physicians, nurses and midwives from 1.07 per 1000 population in 2005 to 2.65 per 1000 population in 2017, Ghana continues to face shortages of health workforce alongside inefficient distribution. The Ministry of Health and its agencies in Ghan...

Following periods of health workforce crisis characterised by a severe shortage of nurses, midwives and doctors due to low production rates and excessive out-migration, the Government of Ghana through the Ministry of Health (MOH) responded by expanding training and allowing private sector involvement in the training of health workers especially nur...

As part of measures to address a severe shortage of nurses and midwives, Ghana embarked on massive scale-up of the production of nurses and midwives which has yielded remarkable improvements in nurse staffing levels. It has, however, also resulted in a dramatic demographic shift in the nursing and midwifery workforce in which 71 to 93% of nurses an...