The Ghana Society for Medical physicists has disputed claims that some of its members have been employed as radiographers.
In March, the Ghana Society of Radiographers alleged that the Ghana Health Service had employed the services of bio-medical engineers who had been trained for only 10 days to operate some digital X-ray machines installed in the country.
According to them, those employed lack the adequate skills to operate the equipment and allowing them to handle that equipment could further hamper the delivery of quality healthcare in the country.
But speaking to Citi News, General Secretary of the Society of Medical Physicists, Dr. Issahaku Schiraz said the allegation brings the name of the profession into disrepute.
“We have submitted a number of petitions to the Ministry of health. They have all the documents so they should know the difference between medical physicists and [biomedical engineers] so anytime they are issuing [postings] that difference should be stated. We as professionals, we didn’t say there is the need for us to be seen as other professionals anywhere within the imaging sector. Our definition as medical physicists is something that cannot be underestimated, we know exactly what we do and so nobody can say that medical physicists should be known as radiographers.”
The radiographers earlier threatened a lawsuit against the Ghana Health Service if it was unwilling to address the issue because the consequences of the action could be dire.
Meanwhile, the Ghana Health Service has said that it cannot be blamed for recruiting biomedical engineers to man the x-ray machines.
It claimed that it reached out to radiographers who had been given financial clearance and interviewed them for the jobs but they refused to accept the postings.
Jacob Acquah Andoh who is the Public Relations Officer of the Ghana Health Service who discredited claims about the period of the training said that the service was forced to seek the services of other health professionals; the biomedical engineers, due to the unwillingness of members of the Ghana Society of Radiographers to accept the postings
“The issue is that, when we compiled the list in 2018, we got the financial clearance, we called them for an interview and we started posting them, none of them were prepared to go to these areas. We only got one person who took appointment. Ghanaians need the services of people to take X-ray and that was why the service decided to reach out to these people [biomedical engineers] trained in medical facilities.”
“They installed these facilities and they are able to maintain the machines. We were not developing this in isolation. We were working with the Nuclear Regulatory Authority (NRA). The training program is not 10 days as being speculated. It is actually a one-month training they are going through,” he disclosed.
