By Agnes Ansah
Accra, Oct. 29, GNA – Private medical schools have urged the government to extend tax reliefs and scholarships to their institutions to ease training costs and improve access to medical education.
They said equitable access to public incentives would strengthen their capacity to train health professionals and help qualified Ghanaian students pursue medical education despite financial constraints.
The appeal was made at the Accra College of Medicine’s (ACM) 10th Anniversary Symposium in Accra, on the theme: “Shaping the Future of Medical Education in Ghana: Lessons from the Past, Priorities for the Future.”
Professor Afua Adwo Jectey Hesse, President of ACM, said private health training institutions paid taxes on educational materials, while public institutions enjoyed exemptions and reliefs that reduced their operational costs.
“You don’t get any tax rebates. Even all our educational material as private sector, we have to pay tax on it, whereas the public sector get relief on those things,” she said, calling for a review of the arrangement.
Prof. Hesse cited support provided by the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) towards improving hostel facilities at a public university and called for similar consideration for private institutions that also contributed to the statutory fund.
“Recently, I read that the NHIA has been able to help improve hostel facilities in one of the public universities. But there is no way they will advance that to the private sector, though we all contribute to the NHIA.
“There should be some relaxation,” she said, and called for a more equitable distribution of public resources to benefit Ghanaian students in private medical schools.
Prof. Alfred Edwin Yawson, Provost of the University of Ghana College of Health Sciences, supported the call for government subsidies and scholarships for private institutions training health professionals.
He said private medical schools helped expand access to medical education because public institutions lacked the capacity to admit all qualified applicants.
“We believe that there is a good reason to call for governmental support towards these private institutions, be it subsidies, be it scholarships for students. The scholarships are for Ghanaian students. They are being trained in Ghana,” he said.
Prof. Yawson said such support would benefit Ghanaian students and make local training a more efficient investment than spending thousands of dollars to send them abroad for medical education.
He also cited private universities in the United States and the United Kingdom that received some form of government support, and urged Ghana to consider a similar approach.
Dr. Eli Kwesi Atikpul, Director of Institutional Advancement and External Relations at the College of Medicine and Applied Sciences (CoMAS), said the appeal was not for direct cash transfers to private medical schools.
He said scholarships and other student-centred interventions would help reduce the cost of training and make medical education more accessible.
Dr. Atikpul said financial constraints prevented some qualified applicants from taking up places in private medical schools, resulting in a loss of potential health professionals.
“There are a number of students who are qualified to go to the medical school. However, they attend the interviews and when you tell them about the fees, they don’t come back because they don’t have the money to pay.
“So, government should provide scholarships for people who get admission into the private medical school,” he appealed.
GNA
Edited by Kenneth Sackey