Fomena Nursing Training School decries abandoned infrastructure upgrading

The Community Health Nurses’ Training School at Fomena in the Adansi North District of Ashanti recorded a 99.4 percent pass rate in the 2012 Community Health Nursing Licensing examinations. 

The school has consistently performed creditably in the exams, organized by the Nurses’ and Midwives Council of Ghana.

The academic laurels have however been achieved in the midst of poor infrastructural development and inadequate tutorial staff.

According to Principal of the school, Mrs. Lynda Rockson Banful Mante, the constraints “make transfer and posting to the school unattractive… and affecting the progress of the school in terms of residential accommodation for students, especially the males, library, skill acquisition laboratory, lecture halls among others”.

She was addressing the 5^th matriculation ceremony of the school at Fomena. Of the 1,517 qualified applicants for the 2012/2013 academic year, the school could only admit 251, representing 12 percent of those interviewed.

The low intake has been attributed to the limited infrastructure to accommodate the students.

The Principal says work to complete part of the school’s abandoned infrastructure has stalled due to lack of funds.

She has therefore appealed to the government and other stakeholders to resource the school in the delivery of quality training.

 “As much as the school appreciates the efforts of the Ministry of Health and other major stakeholders of the school to ensure that these abandoned structures are completed, we would still continue to make a passionate appeal to the government to provide the needed funds for the completion of these might structures which will address most of our challenges and also facilitate the accreditation of the school to offer additional higher nursing programmes”, stated Mrs. Banful Mante.

The Fomena nursing school is in the process of getting affiliated to the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) and also going through accreditation to offer Diploma in Community Health Nursing to provide preventive, promotional and rehabilitative healthcare services.

The school currently runs a two year certificate programme with the objective of training community health nurses to render primary healthcare services.

Community health nurses are the main service providers in the implementation of the Community-based Health Planning and Services (CHPS) by the Ministry of Health to make primary health care accessible to all.

District Chief Executive for Adansi North, Alhaji Abdul-Lateef Majdoub, announced government will soon construct a 120 bed capacity hospital at Fomena which will also serve as a practical training ground for the school.

He says the project will take 11 months to complete when construction takes off.

Story by Kofi Adu Domfeh