The Western Regional Health Directorate has initiated steps to set up a Regional Research Unit to facilitate clinical excellence and provide evidence for critical medical decision- making.
  
The Regional Minister, Hon. Paul Evans Aidoo made this known in a speech read on his behalf at the opening of the 8th Annual General Conference of the Medical Superintendents’ Group (MSG) at Busua in Ahanta West District of the Western Region.
   
He said the Effia-Nkwanta Regional Hospital, the major referral centre in the region, was poorly equipped for adequate medical research.
   
The three-day conference was on the theme: "Research and Medical Practice, Capacity Building in our Hospitals."
  
Hon. Aidoo said inadequate infrastructure and lack of key personnel
including pathologists hinder clinical medical research.
   
"New discoveries and expansion of medical frontiers could only be achieved with a well strategised medical research," he said.
   
He said critical areas that needed special attention were the
re-emergence of certain tropical diseases such as yaws, filariasis,
which abound in the Ahanta West District and guinea worm.
   
He also listed the high disease burden of malaria, HIV/AIDS, hypertension, diabetes, soaring maternal and infant mortality and morbidity as well as health care financing improvement options and high technology development as other areas of focus.
   
Hon. Aidoo urged the conference to examine the issue of ethics, which relates to patients privacy and consent in medical research.
  
The President of MSG, Dr George Acquaye said there was the need for the expansion of the country’s health facilities, to avoid over crowding of patients.
  
He said there was the need to regularly replace equipment at the
facilities to increase efficiency and to motivate health workers to attend to patients.
   
Dr Acquaye spoke of the delay in reimbursing health facilities under
the National Health Service Insurance Scheme.
   
He asked members of the group to publish their research works in the Ghana Medical Journal and other medium and also read other study findings.
 
A medical superintendent, Dr Linda Vanotoo said health delivery in the region had to change because of the discovery of oil and asked the conference to consider the issue.
  
She noted that organisational barriers and lack of requisite number of personnel and technical know-how at the medical centres could be overcome when the officials use guidelines that are developed by experts or availing themselves of competency based training and putting in structures that would help them to use results obtained from research.

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