Madam Rebecca Matthew, the Principal Midwifery Officer at the reproductive health unit of the Tamale Teaching Hospital, has said that healthcare providers need regular refresher training programmes to keep themselves abreast with developments in the sector.
She said the training was relevant in ensuring that patients, particularly Persons With Disabilities (PWDs) could regain confidence in healthcare workers regarding their access to Sexual Reproductive Health services.
She said this at a Sexual Reproductive Health Rights (SRHR) awareness seminar, organized by the Ghana Federation of Disability Organizations (GFD) at Tamale for PWDs as a way of promoting their SRHR needs.
The one-day seminar was supported by Amplify Change (UK) life, a global charity institution that is concerned with the promotion of sexual lives of individuals.Madam Rebecca said the attitude of health care providers was a major reason PWDs did not access their SRHR needs although some were ignorant of them and called for customer care service training as a remedy to the situation.
She mentioned SRHR as an essential aspect of human life and stressed the need for the public to know about these rights as well as getting access services regarding them.Madam Rebecca said healthcare providers sometimes exhibit certain attitudes towards patients as a result of the poor working environments they found themselves, which, calls for constant motivation.
Mr Moses Fordjour, the Monitoring, Evaluation and Knowledge Managements manager of GFD, said the sexual life of PWDs has been a neglected topic and that called for the attention of GFD to redirect resources to promote their rights.
He expressed worry about how PWDs were excluded in many social aspects which made them feel inferior, particularly, job acquisition and urged both government and private employers to employ qualified PWDs.He called on the Ghana Health Service to include PWDs in programmes that targeted the vulnerable in the society.