Health Ministry Prioritizes Primary Care in 8,000-Worker Recruitment, Launches District-Level Portal

Story by Fada Amakye

The Ministry of Health has begun recruiting 8,000 health professionals across the country, with a focus on strengthening primary healthcare, community-based care, and services in underserved districts.

Director of Human Resource for Health Development, Mr. Frederick Acheampong, said the exercise follows financial clearance received from the Ministry of Finance in April 2025.

“The recruitment exercise is heavily guided by the objective of the free primary healthcare policy, with emphasis on strengthening preventive care, community-based care, and primary health care delivery, particularly in underserved areas,” he said.

Mr. Acheampong said allocations were based on staffing norms and annual human resource requirements submitted by the Ghana Health Service, CHAG, Teaching Hospitals, and the Mental Health Authority. Regions and districts with the greatest staffing gaps and healthcare needs received the highest allocations.

“All regions received some allocations, but not all metropolitan, municipal, and district assemblies were considered,” he explained.

He noted a shift in focus for this recruitment. While previous exercises prioritized registered general nurses and midwives, this round prioritizes Nurse Assistant Preventive and Registered Public Health Nurses, who account for about 40% of the 6,500 nursing slots.

“The emphasis at this point in time is on free primary healthcare, and we are going to start with home care and home visits, so these are the priorities we used to do the allocations,” Mr. Acheampong said.

To improve transparency and address imbalances in the distribution of health workers, the Ministry has introduced a new recruitment portal that decentralizes the process to the district level.

“Today that we are done with the process, all of the people that have submitted applications will fall directly to the district. The district will call them for interviews. The Ministry of Health will not have any role to play again,” he said.

The portal ingested records for 53,440 health professionals within a week, with 53,404 completing data verification.

Mr. Acheampong said feedback from the system is being used to improve user experience going forward.

The recruitment comes against a backlog of about 105,000 unemployed health professionals, some of whom completed training as far back as 2018 and 2019, with the last batch of nurses graduating in 2020.