The Registrar of the Medical and Dental Council of Ghana, Dr. Divine Banyubala, believes doctors can be Ghana’s most important resource.

“One of our surest bets as a country is not gold, silver or diamond. It is the quality of the Ghanaian trained doctors,” he said on The Point of View on Citi TV.

As a regulator, he said his outfit has been working to boost Ghana’s competitive advantage in this area.

“We think that we need to build on these 60 years of solid local quality medical education. To be able to do that, we need to deal with the issues of the constraints that we have,” Dr. Banyubala said.

As Ghana prepares to celebrate 60 years of medical education, one of the issues he cited was the lack of basic infrastructure.

“The medical school is in Korle bu as a temporary measure and since 1962, it has still been temporary,” he noted as an example.

Dr. Banyubala believes Ghana is capable of training much more than the about-1,000 doctors it currently trains.

“For us as a regulator, we hope and are confidently ambitious that we can train up to 3,000 doctors a year in this country.”

He also suggested that all regional hospitals and appropriate municipal and district hospitals serve as training centres for doctors.

“That will allow us to deal with issues of inequality in the distribution of doctors… it will deal with issues of bringing quality basic medical services closer to our people in the region,” Dr. Banyubala said.