Not every doctor or nurse is a frontline health worker – Oppong Nkrumah explains

In response to agitations about the exclusion of some health workers from the remuneration reserved for Covid-19 frontline workers Information Minister, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah has outined the specific definition of frontline health workers.

Some health professionals have expressed concerns about being exempted from the government tax incentives given to frontline workers in the battle against Covid-19.

Speaking on The Final Lockdown on Sunday, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah stressed that, the classification of frontline health workers is specific to those handling positive Covid-19 cases.

“The reality is that not every doctor or nurse is a frontline health worker. For the purposes of this exercise, a frontline worker is a nomenclature for persons who have actually handled positive cases,” he told host Emefa Apawu.

Also commenting on the issue, the Deputy Minister for Health, Dr Bernard Okoe-Boye, explained that the frontline list is dynamic.

“You can be in a position where in the month of August you qualified as a frontline because you managed cases. If in September there are no cases, you don’t get paid.”

He advised that the handling of issues pertaining to the payment of frontline health workers should be reserved for the management of hospitals as they are in the best position to validate those who qualify.

“What we’ve told them is that the first point of call is the management of the facilities and they will bring the request to the region and the region will bring it to us and then once it goes through the motion and we are satisfied that this is a frontline worker, we will commit ourselves.”

Currently, Ghana’s case count stands at 46,387 with 34 new cases, 470 active cases, 45,618 Recoveries/Discharge and 299 deaths.