Community Health Nurses Commence Strike Today

By Pascal Kafu Abotsi
Over 13,000 community health nurses across the country, will effective today, Tuesday, May 31, embark on an industrial strike action, until such a time that their demand from government is given attention. The decision was taken after a three-week ultimatum issued to the Ministry of Health to revert their designation from ‘Health Assistants’ back to the known and called ‘Community Health Nurses’, for which they were trained, proved fruitless.

 In fact, the nurses, at a press conference in Accra yesterday, glaringly stated that they had been in touch with the ministry, through the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC), since last year, to have their grievances addressed, but no attempt had been made to give them hearing.

According to the National President of the Community Health Nurses Association of Ghana, “The name ‘Community Health Nurse’ has been a household name so far as preventive health care in Ghana is concerned and we still cannot understand why it should be taken from people trained in Community Health Nursing.”

Ms Esther Frimpongmaa Bamfo, the president of the association  told the press that the Nursing and Midwifery Council, last year, changed their traditional name to ‘Nurse Assistants’ and had since been issuing certificates in that regard. She said the health professionals approached the registrar to make meaning of the cause of the conversion, only to be told that his (registrar) outfit had been empowered by the Health Regulatory Bodies Act (Act 857) to do so.

“However, it is interesting to know that there is nowhere in the said Act which indicates that Community Health Nurses are called Nurse Assistants and as such it is disheartening to see them issue certificates to our members  as Nurse Assistants after completing their training successfully,” Ms Bamfo explained.

She further revealed that following the discrepancy in the information, the Association petitioned the Minister of Health, the Director General of the Ghana Health Service and the Director of the Nursing and Midwifery Services at the Ministry of Health on several occasions concerning the intended move by the NMC, but nothing was done about the situation.

Even though the group confirmed that their salaries had not been affected in anyway, they expressed concern about the future repercussions the change of name could have on them  should they gullibly accept it at the moment.

“We wish to state that we don’t want to be called nurse assistants and until our grievances are addressed accordingly by the Honourable Minister of Health and the major stakeholders of health, we shall not continue to render our services to various communities in the country,” the national president warned.

Community health nurses are individuals who are given two-year training in community health nursing, mostly after completing Senior High School education. As part of their contribution to society, they work at the community level to undertake and champion health promotion and prevention.