The Western Regional Directorate of the Ghana Health Service (GHS) has organised its 2024 annual performance review meeting to take stock of programmes, activities and interventions for last year.
The two-day forum, held in Takoradi, was on the theme: “Improving the Quality of Care Through Effective Human Resource Management: The Role of Leadership”.
The meeting provided a platform for participants to discuss and measure their achievements, and challenges against set goals and come up with pragmatic solutions to improve upon their performance for this year.
Dr Nana Yaw Ofori Yeboah, the Western Regional Director of the GHS, during the opening of the forum, said this year’s theme focused on the crucial role played by leaders at all levels to turn their human resources into an effective tool that promoted quality health care in the region.
He stated that the event was part of their mandates to review, monitor and assess the state of health in the Region using selected key performance indicators to ensure the highest standards of healthcare delivery in the region.

He noted that it was imperative for leadership to put in place appropriate working environments for health care professionals to give of their best for improved health outcomes.
Dr Yeboah said: “Inadequate staff, poor staff morale, poor working environment, inadequate training, inadequate supportive environment, overworked staff and inadequate support to maintain our physical and mental wellbeing cannot contribute to quality improvement, thus, under these conditions, it is the poor patient who suffers.”
He continued: “If we do not ensure effective human resource management, patients may experience long waiting hours, wrong prescriptions written, wrong medications dispensed, mobile phones of critical staff may suddenly go off when needed most and the logistics needed may also not be available.”
He stated that improving healthcare service delivery was a collective responsibility of all stakeholders and partners through effective management of the service providers.
Touching on some of the successes chalked last year, Dr Yeboah noted that tuberculosis treatment success rate stood at 98.6 per cent and related case fatality rate also dropped from 1.6 to 0.7 per cent between 2023 and 2024.
He said the region rightfully received national awards for those achievements.
Stillbirth rate also continued to improve with the region recording 7.0/1000 total births as against a target of 11.5/1000, with medicines prescribed by generic name in public facilities improving from 92.3 to 94.7 per cent between 2023 and 2024, he said.
On challenges, he noted that staff attrition increased from 137 in 2022 to 236 in 2023 before dropping by 30 per cent in 2024.
He mentioned inadequate number of certain categories of staff, shortage of accommodation for staff, old and weak trucks at regional medical stores needed to ensure smooth operation.
Mr Joseph Nelson, the Western Regional Minister, in a speech read on his behalf, congratulated the health directorate for their enormous contributions to ensuring the wellbeing of the people through quality healthcare service delivery.
He pledged his commitment to supporting the directorate to continue providing quality healthcare to the people to help achieve Universal Health Coverage (UHC) in the region.
Awards were given to individual health workers, Managing Directors of health institutions, district and regional facilities who distinguished themselves in the discharge of their duties during the year under review.