The Ghana Health Service (GHS) has been urged to institute formal training for mortuary attendants to improve on the handling of dead bodies in mortuaries.

Currently, mortuary attendants are not given professional training by any health institution apart from training on the job.

The President of the Medical Excellence Award (MEA), Dr Dauda Amdu-Adandada, who said this, noted that the lack of professional training for mortuary attendants had adversely affected the management of dead bodies in mortuaries.

Dr Amdu-Adandada said this when he led a five-member delegation from the MEA to call on the management of the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) to seek partnership for the second edition of the awards ceremony scheduled for November 19, this year.

About 1,000 nominations have been received for this year’s awards.

The Awards

The MEA was instituted to recognise excellence in the medical field. The categories of the awards are Pharmacists, Doctors, Nurses, Midwives, Dentists, Mortuary Attendants, Diagnosis Scientists and Auxiliary staff.

Since it would be a nationwide event, the MEA team looks forward to nomination from the missionary hospitals, private hospitals as well as government hospitals across the country.

Dr Amdu-Adandada said a team had been instituted to scrutinise and do proper screening to select those who deserve the awards.

An award winner must have served a minimum of five years in the health sector.

He said the programme would motivate health personnel to work harder.

The Director of Internal Audit of GBC, Mr Opoku-Mensah Peter, who represented the Director-General of GBC, assured the medical excellence award team that GBC would offer live coverage of the programme.

He asked them to pay their television licence fee if they had not done so, since the payment would enable the corporation to undertake more social responsibility activities.

Source:Graphic.com.gh