The Presbyterian Church of Ghana (PCG) has commissioned 41 ministers, who will be posted to some of its branches across the country to serve the church and help revive the faith of members.

The High Court has ordered the Musama Disco Christo Church (MDCC) not to celebrate the 2013 version of its Peace Festival for the sake of peace.

The Ghana National Association of Garages (GNAG) has received 200 pieces of tyre changing machines and air compressors under the Local Enterprises and Skill Development  (LESDEP) facility in Accra.

The GYEEDA report and its handling so far tells the whole story. President John Dramani Mahama is in very big trouble but the trouble makers are in his own backyard.

Mr Samuel Akuamoah, a member of National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE), has urged Ghanaians not to see the personnel of the commission as apostles of doom.

Statistics released by the National Road Safety Commission (NRSC) on road traffic crashes indicates that 492 deaths were recorded from April and June with 3,333 injuries.

World War Z, a 2013 American-British Apocalyptic horror film starring international Superstar, Brad Pitt, will debut at the Silverbird Cinemas on Friday, 9th August, 2013.

Dr Kwesi Botchwey, a former Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, on Tuesday advised government to stick to its “no new projects” policy in the 2013 budget.

President John Dramani Mahama says as the President of Ghana, he would have no option but to accept the verdict of the Supreme Court in the on-going Election 2012 Petition hearing.

Mr. Philip Addison, lead counsel for the petitioners seeking to overturn the declaration of President Mahama as winner of the 2012 presidential election says constitutional and statutory violations, malpractices and irregularities had a material effect on the election results and that the declared outcome must not stand.

Counsel for the National Democratic Congress, Mr Tsatsu Tsikata, says the key witness for the petitioners, Dr Mahamadu Bawumia has “fundamentally let his side down” as he consistently contradicted himself in the box.

Lead Counsel for the Electoral Commission, Mr James Quashie-Idun has in his oral submission to the Supreme Court, said the petitioners are fasting onto errors committed in the completion of pink sheets by presiding officers that do not benefit any particular candidate or affect the number of votes validly cast at polling stations.

Personnel of the security agencies in the Western Region, joined by the Regional Minister, Mr. E.K.T. Addo today undertook an 11-kilometre route march to assure the public of their readiness to deal with any lawless acts that may follow the Supreme Court verdict in the election petition.

On the very day the maiden edition of this conversation started, the Chairman of the Constitutional Review Implementation Committee, appointed in August 2012, held a press conference to outline “some of the key steps taken to ensure government's White Paper sees the light of day.”  

Japan on Tuesday unveiled its biggest warship since World War II, a huge flat-top destroyer that has raised eyebrows in China and elsewhere because it bears a strong resemblance to a conventional aircraft carrier.

The Supreme Court has fixed August 29, 2013 as judgment day for the election petition which has been pending since December 2013.

Nearly two-thirds of 50-64 year olds and 43 percent of those aged 65+ are now on Facebook -- which explains why your great aunt is poking you and potentially why the younger generation is decamping to Twitter.

Persons Living with HIV (PLHIV) in the country have called on the government to, as a matter of urgency; intervene to address the shortage of the test strips, used in measuring the anti-bodies of HIV persons, across the country.

Despite priority placed on maternal mortality within the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) framework, there is a long way to go in overcoming one of the most pressing challenges in providing health care in resource-poor settings such as northern Ghana. The availability and distribution of trained personnel, including physicians, midwives, nurses, and other clinical staff to provide the required health services to the people of the region seems challenging. According to the 2010 MDGs Ghana report, the three northern regions shoulder substantial burden of Ghana’s maternal mortality, but it is home to less than three per cent of Ghana’s health care workers. Northern Region faces critical shortages of various categories of health professionals including doctors, midwives, nurses, and other clinical staff. The pool of skilled healthcare providers at the disposal of the region are unevenly distributed and concentrated in the regional capital, with many of them doubling in part-time jobs (locum) in the private facilities.As a result, the majority of districts considered rural, often hard to reach, and remote areas are also resource-poor and have minimal access to skilled health care providers giving the necessary treatment and care.Nanumba South District is one such district considered rural with critical shortages of health workers in key essential service areas. This was disclosed by the District Director of Health Services, “Look, in one of my sub-districts you can only get there by boat over the Oti River or you go there through Yendi and Zabzugu district before coming back to the sub-district and we do not even have a midwife there to conduct delivery. Can you imagine what will happen if a labouring woman needs a referral from such a place?”. This is the frustration of the district director of health services for Nanumba South when I visited her district recently. The geographic terrain has also worked to define the location and preference of health workers even within the district. Local health personnel tend to flock to the health facility with the best resources (Wulensi Health Centre), which is in the district capital. The desire of health workers to want to be at the district capital is natural so they can enjoy the benefits of better facilities and the conveniences associated with living in a more populated area.This is a problem because more than half of the people in the district live in the rural areas, yet all the midwives live in the district capital or urban centres leaving the rural inhabitants of this district without access to skilled health delivery during labour. The irony of this arrangement is that the policy of the Ghana Health Service (GHS) is that no traditional birth attendant (TBA) should conduct deliveries even for people living in rural areas where there are no health facilities. They should rather refer labouring women to the health facilities even if there are no midwives in such facilities. The real question is, is it possible to achieve universal skilled delivery coverage when we have an unequal distribution of midwives? How can this anomaly be corrected within the short to medium term to promote access to prenatal care and safe delivery in the rural areas of deprived districts such as Nanumba South? I think this is a call for the GHS particularly the district health management team (DHMT) in Nanumba South District to try to counter the “centripetal force” of the urban centres by supporting staff in health centers located in rural areas to increase rural clients’ access to prenatal care.Investing in staff training, offering fair incentives, and creating support networks through the available avenues created by the health system will help retain critical skilled personnel in the rural areas to provide essential care services to the population in need.One of such training opportunities is the programme that allows DHMTs to sponsor community health officers who have worked for a certain number of years in the district to enrol directly in midwifery training. This will enable the DHMTs to bond the beneficiaries and keep them in facilities located in rural areas for at least two years.The DHMT should also take a second look at its staffing policies for different health facilities in their catchment area and plan whether gaps exist that need to be filled. In planning for staffing and training, they should consider how they can harmonise their staffing needs with service policy and standards and align with priority needs of the district to help overcome staff shortages.It is all about priority setting, leadership decision-making, and choices.Finally, the DHMT should constitute a quality improvement (QI) team to test changes aimed at addressing the skills gaps for prenatal care in their district. Even though this may be a long term solution, it will afford the opportunity to test local solutions in human resource capacity building in the district. By Solomon A. Attinbire/Daily Graphic/Ghana— The writer is the Senior Monitoring & Evaluation Officer of Project Fives Alive

Mrs Mercy Haizel-Ashia, former Director of Human Resource and Organisational Development of the University of Ghana, has been sworn in as the Registrar of the University with effect from August 1, 2013.The Chairman of the University Council, Prof. Justice S. K. Date-Baah, performed the swearing-in.Mrs. Haizel-Ashia, 51, thus becomes the first female Registrar of the University of Ghana, taking over from Mr Joseph Maafo Budu, who has proceeded on statutory retirement.