Yamfo (Ahafo), March 20, GNA – Mr. Sugandh Rajaram, Indian High Commissioner to Ghana, says India will build a sturdy partnership with the College of Health, Yamfo (CoHY) to make it a highly rated international university.
He said as part of the partnership, scholarship packages would be granted to the staff to pursue Masters’ and Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) programmes in related areas with accredited Indian Universities and assured ”students and staff exchange programmes to boost teaching and learning ”.
Mr. Rajaram made the declaration on Thursday when he visited the College in the company of Mr. George Yaw Boakye, the Ahafo Regional Minister, as part of his one-day working tour of the region.
Regarding research and institutional collaborations, the High Commissioner said suitable Indian universities would be identified to partner and support the College to conduct research to enhance its academic excellence.
On his part, Dr. Dr. Mohammed M. Ibrahim, the Director of CoHY, said since its inception, the Board and Management of the College had been pursuing the vision and mission of the institution.
“The vision of the College is to be a centre of excellence with the mandate to envisage and respond to the national health workforce needs of communities in Ghana and humanity”.
Dr. Dr. Ibrahim added that, “the College’s mission is to train and educate health professionals, who are highly skilled, knowledgeable, well-motivated and capable of providing quality health services to all manner of persons in all settings by applying modern technological principles to health care delivery”.
On the College’s academic performance, he said:the first batch of Physician Assistants students had 72 per cent pass rate that enabled the College to top the country’s table, while students from the Allied Health programmes had 95 per cent pass rate.
Dr. Dr. Ibrahim said the rapid growth of the College had led to infrastructure inadequacy such as hostel facilities, lecture rooms, staff accommodation, information-communication and technology and library.
He said inadequate means of transport was making supervision of students’ practical activities difficult and therefore appealed to government to assist the College with a higher-seater capacity bus to aid students in their clinical practice and other field work.
Dr. Dr. Ibrahim said the College was in dire need of teaching and learning materials such as projectors, desktop computers and laptops for both staff and students. Printers, equipment for the science laboratory and required modern books are nedded to equip the library.
The College has a total student population of 1,518 comprising 771 males and 747 females representing 50.79 per cent and 49.21 per cent respectively. 1,444 are regular students and 76 are sandwich students.
The College became fully established in 2015 with the core mandate to train multi-purpose health personnel who are diligent and dedicated to the well-being of the citizens of Ghana and beyond through the provision of quality preventive and curative Healthcare.
Dr. Dr. Ibrahim said currently the institution taught four degree programmes – Bachelor of Science (BSc.) Physician Assistantship, BSc. Community Mental Health, BSc. Community Health Nutrition andBSc. Health Information Management.
Dr. Dr. Ibrahim mentioned BSc. Environmental Health, BSc. Opticianry, BSc. Health Promotion,BSc. Medical Laboratory Science as well as BSc. Epidemiology and Disease Control as some programmes awaiting accreditation.
GNA