Established | 4 January 1958 |
---|---|
Founded at | Accra |
Merger of | Gold Coast Medical Practitioners Union & British Medical Association (Ghana branch) |
Professional title | Medical association |
Headquarters | Accra, Ghana |
Coordinates | 5°32′20″N0°13′48″W / 5.539°N 0.230°W |
Membership | 1700 |
Official language | English |
President | Dr. (Med) Frank Serebour |
Vice President | Prof.(Med) Ernest Yorke |
General Secretary | Dr. (Dent) Richard Selormey |
Treasurer | Dr. Elizabeth Esi Crentsil |
Affiliations | World Medical Association Commonwealth Medical Association Confederation of African Medical Associations and Societies |
Website | ghanamedassoc |
The Ghana Medical Association (GMA) represents physicians, surgeons and dentists working throughout Ghana. [1] It was established in 1958 and is divided into ten divisions representing each region of Ghana as at the end of 2018. [2] [3]
The earliest medical organisation of medical staff was during the Gold Coast era when the Gold Coast Medical Practitioners Union was formed in 1933. This was founded by three doctors, Frederick Victor Nanka-Bruce who was the president and spokesman, C.E. Reindorf and W.A.C. Nanka-Bruce. J.E. Hutton Mills was the secretary. Following the establishment of an African government under colonial rule in 1951, a Ghana branch of the British Medical Association was formed in January 1953. [4] This also had Nanka-Bruce as its first president. Both associations were merged to form the Ghana Medical Association on 4 January 1958. It was inaugurated by Kwame Nkrumah at the Arden Hall of the Ambassador Hotel in Accra. [5] Charles Easmon was elected as the first president of the GMA. [6]
This council meets every other month. It is made up of the following persons: [7]
In November 2024, the Ghana Medical Association (GMA) held its 66th Annual General Conference in the Volta Region, focusing on improving internet access for healthcare through collaboration between the government and telecom companies. GMA President Dr. Frank Serebour highlighted telemedicine’s potential to enhance healthcare access and efficiency, especially in rural areas. [9]
The conference also noted barriers to telemedicine, such as limited internet infrastructure and regulatory concerns. Additionally, members discussed the benefits of artificial intelligence in diagnostics and recommended establishing standards to support its integration into healthcare. [10] [11]
The president of the GMA since 2017 has been Frank Ankobea. There have been 22 past presidents as at 2018. [12]
Francis Kwame Nkrumah was a Ghanaian politician, political theorist, and revolutionary. He served as Prime Minister of the Gold Coast from 1952 until 1957, when it gained independence from Britain. He was then the first Prime Minister and then the President of Ghana, from 1957 until 1966. An influential advocate of Pan-Africanism, Nkrumah was a founding member of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) and winner of the Lenin Peace Prize from the Soviet Union in 1962.
Telehealth is the distribution of health-related services and information via electronic information and telecommunication technologies. It allows long-distance patient and clinician contact, care, advice, reminders, education, intervention, monitoring, and remote admissions. Telemedicine is sometimes used as a synonym, or is used in a more limited sense to describe remote clinical services, such as diagnosis and monitoring. When rural settings, lack of transport, a lack of mobility, conditions due to outbreaks, epidemics or pandemics, decreased funding, or a lack of staff restrict access to care, telehealth may bridge the gap as well as provide distance-learning; meetings, supervision, and presentations between practitioners; online information and health data management and healthcare system integration. Telehealth could include two clinicians discussing a case over video conference; a robotic surgery occurring through remote access; physical therapy done via digital monitoring instruments, live feed and application combinations; tests being forwarded between facilities for interpretation by a higher specialist; home monitoring through continuous sending of patient health data; client to practitioner online conference; or even videophone interpretation during a consult.
The University of Ghana is a public university located in Accra, Ghana. It is the oldest public university in Ghana.
The Indian Association for Medical Informatics (IAMI) is a professional society that plays a role in promoting and furthering the application of informatics in the fields of healthcare, bioscience and medicine in India. It was established in Feb 1993 by Prof. Dr. Nanduri Gajanana Rao BSc, MBBS, MNAMS, PhD at Nizam's Institute of Medical Sciences, Hyderabad. Registered at District Registrar of Societies on 18 Sep 1993 - Regn No. 3774/93
William Ofori Atta, popularly called "Paa Willie", was a Ghanaian founding member of the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC) and one of the founding fathers of Ghana as one of "The Big Six" detained by the British colonial government in the then Gold Coast. He later became a Minister for Foreign Affairs in Ghana's second republic between 1971 and 1972.
Kwame Addo-Kufuor is a Ghanaian politician and physician. He is the chancellor of Kumasi Technical University. Addo-Kufuor was a member of parliament for Manhyia and from 2001 to 2007, he was the minister for defence under President John Kufuor, his brother. Between June 2008 and 2009, he was the Minister for Interior.
Medical Missions for Children is an independent, non-profit organization that works to improve health outcomes for our world's most critically ill children by providing individual telemedicine consultations and implementing education programs focused on narrowing the knowledge gap between healthcare providers in the United States and those in the developing world. MMC focuses on "transferring medical knowledge from those who have it to those who need it" using a state-of-the-art communications infrastructure in order to touch the lives of more than one million critically ill children each year.
The Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences (GAAS) is a learned society for the arts and sciences based in Accra, Ghana. The institution was founded in November 1959 by Kwame Nkrumah with the aim to promote the pursuit, advancement and dissemination of knowledge in all branches of the sciences and the humanities.
Frederick Victor Nanka-Bruce was a physician, journalist and politician in the Gold Coast. He was the third African to practise orthodox medicine in the colony, after Benjamin Quartey-Papafio and Ernest James Hayford.
Charles Odamtten Easmon or C. O. Easmon, popularly known as Charlie Easmon, was a medical doctor and academic who became the first Ghanaian to formally qualify as a surgeon specialist and the first Dean of the University of Ghana Medical School. Easmon performed the first successful open-heart surgery in Ghana in 1964, and modern scholars credit him as the "Father of Cardiac Surgery in West Africa". Easmon was of Sierra Leone Creole, Ga-Dangme, African-American, Danish, and Irish ancestry and a member of the distinguished Easmon family, a Sierra Leone Creole medical dynasty of African-American descent.
Jacob Kenneth Kofi Kwakye-Maafo, also known as Nana Ohemeng Awere V, is a Ghanaian physician and a surgeon who specialises in Obstetrics and Gynecology and traditional ruler of Assin Nsuta and the chief executive of the West End Hospital, Kumasi. A past president of the Ghana Medical Association, he is an advocate of community health and has helped establish several health centres, rural hospitals and clinics in the Ashanti Region of Ghana notably the Ankaasi Faith Healing Methodist Hospital and the Lake Clinic at Amakom near Lake Bosomtwi. He was a member of the committee set up by the government of Ghana in 2003, tasked with the implementation of the National Health Insurance Scheme in Ghana.
The West End Hospital is a 40-bed private health care facility in Kumasi, Ghana. It is popularly known as the "Kwakye-Maafo Hospital" because of its distinguished services in fertility, obstetrics and gynaecology by the founder, Dr. J.K. Kwakye-Maafo, a medical practitioner and former president of the Ghana Medical Association.
Emmanuel Evans-Anfom was a Ghanaian physician, scholar, university administrator, and public servant who served as the second Vice Chancellor of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology from 1967 to 1973.
The Ghana Bar Association (GBA) is a professional association of lawyers in Ghana, including what used to be called solicitors and barristers but they are now called legal practitioners, as well as magistrates.By convention, all lawyers admitted to practice in Ghana become automatic members of the association. The GBA has its roots in the Gold Coast Bar Association, the first president was Sierra Leonean lawyer Francis (Frans) Dove. The Bar Association drew up its first formal constitution and code of ethics in 1958 and from then on except for a few occasions when due to political reasons an annual conference has not been possible, the Bar Association holds a conference annually to take important decisions and to elect its officers who hold office for only one year but are eligible for re-election. The Bar Association considers that in this sense it is one of the most democratic institutions in Ghana. The Ghana Bar Association is made up of lawyers with good standing who are legally declared to practice law in Ghana.
The University of Ghana Medical School also UGMS is the medical school of Ghana's first public research institution, the University of Ghana. It is currently located at the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital in Accra. The medical school was first planned in 1919, but took its first students in 1962.
Kwame Safo-Adu was a Ghanaian physician and also a Ghanaian politician; a Minister of State in the second republic and a founding member of the New Patriotic Party.
Silas Rofino Amu Dodu, was a Ghanaian physician and academic. He was a professor of medicine, the second Dean at the University of Ghana Medical School and a pioneer cardiologist in Ghana. He and others have been described as pioneers of the medical profession in Ghana.
Augustine Kwame Adu also known as Augustine Kwame Adu Amankwah was a Ghanaian academic, politician, diplomat and lawyer. He taught in various schools earlier in his career. He served as the Regional Chief Executive of the Eastern Region and Ghana's ambassador to Mexico. He ventured into law later in his career.