Health Minister Kwabena Mintah Akandoh says the next wave of health worker recruitment is just around the corner, with government waiting on financial clearance to bring in the remaining 8,000 professionals under its 16,000-worker hiring plan.
Speaking in an interview, Akandoh said the second phase would complete a recruitment drive that already brought the first batch of workers into the health system.
"Very soon, we are going to begin the process to recruit another 8,000 to make up for the 16,000 health professionals," he said.
Akandoh was upfront that government intends to make health recruitment a regular exercise, but admitted the backlog of unemployed graduates built up over recent years will not disappear quickly.
He pointed specifically to professionals who completed their training between 2021 and 2025, many of whom are still without jobs despite qualifying years ago.
Looking Beyond Ghana's Borders
To ease pressure on the domestic job market, government is also exploring a Ghana Labour Exchange Programme designed to connect trained health professionals with employment opportunities abroad.
Akandoh disclosed that he recently travelled to Columbus in the United States, where he signed a memorandum of understanding with a mayor to open up overseas job placements for Ghanaian health workers.
The programme is meant to work alongside domestic hiring rather than replace it, giving graduates who cannot immediately find positions at home a path to employment overseas while government works through the backlog locally.
Akandoh did not give a specific date for when the 8,000-worker phase would officially begin, tying it instead to the release of the needed funding.
