Some empty chairs captured in one of the hospitals visited by GhanaWeb’s Michael Oberteye
Correspondence from Eastern Region
Physician Assistants (PAs) have been deployed to handle the outpatient department (OPD) of the Atua Government Hospital in the Lower Manya Krobo Municipal in the Eastern Region as a stop-gap measure to mitigate the impact of the ongoing nationwide strike by nurses and midwives.
The measure is to ensure that healthcare delivery at the facility is not unnecessarily disrupted over the industrial action, which has severely impacted healthcare services across the country since the GRNMA began its strike on Wednesday, June 4, 2025, leaving patients stranded and medical facilities struggling to cope.
The nurses and midwives initiated the strike over what they describe as prolonged delays in the implementation of their 2024 Collective Agreement, which addresses critical conditions of service and remuneration.
GhanaWeb, upon a visit to the facility on Thursday, observed the PAs attending to patients who visited the hospital for medical care.
Despite the intervention, the usual day-long long queues were absent with the OPDs totally empty after 2 pmwhen the Assistants had closed.
Some 97 professional nurses, 44 enrolled nurses and 44 midwives occupy various departments of the hospital including the public health, eye, theatre, ante natal, maternity, emergency and mental health departments as well as the male, female and kids wards.
Some of the patients who received treatment at the hospital despite the strike shared their experiences with GhanaWeb’s Eastern Regional Correspondent, Michael Oberteye.
A teacher who only gave his name as Isaac said his son, whom he brought to the facility, was attended to by the PAs in the absence of the nurses. Speaking at the pharmacy where he had gone to access some drugs, he said, “…when I brought him here, everything was okay, even though the nurses are on strike…we started from the OPD and we even went to the lab.”
Another patient, Tetteh Agnes, narrated that she was attended to by the nurses on duty at the maternity ward when she arrived for medical care. “[When we arrived], we were told that they weren’t working because nurses were on strike, but we were directed to the maternity ward where we were attended to,” she recounted.
Meanwhile, checks at the St. Martin de Porres hospital at Agormanya also in Lower Manya Krobo reveal an increasing OPD attendance since Wednesday, when the strike started, with more health seekers trooping to the facility as an alternative.
Nurses at the Catholic owned facility who are barred from participating in the strike due to the facility’s status as a member of the Christian Health Association of Ghana (CHAG), were spotted in their red armbands as a sign of solidarity with their striking colleagues.
Medical Director at the hospital, Samuel Adjei Antwi, an Obstetrician Gynaecologist, observed the OPD’s increasing numbers since Wednesday, as a result of the strike.
“Our staff who are members of the GRNMA are in solidarity with the strike so some of them as at yesterday (Wednesday) were wearing their red bands but they still come to work,” he said, adding that the facility was anticipating an increased workload with expected further increase in OPD numbers as a result of the industrial action.
Meanwhile, the National Labour Commission (NLC) on Thursday, June 05, 2025, successfully secured a High Court injunction compelling the striking nurses and midwives to immediately end their nationwide industrial action and return to work.
