The University of Health and Allied Sciences (UHAS) in Ho and its School of Public Health (SPH) campus in Hohoe, have concurrently held floats to begin activities of the University’s 10th Anniversary celebration.
The float on some principal streets of Ho and Hohoe was to whip up public awareness of the celebration as well as distributing flyers of the University to the public.
Professor Harry K. Tagbor, Pro-Vice-Chancellor, UHAS told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) that the University had trained doctors, nurses, midwives, public health officers, nutritionists, disease control officers and health information officers over the decade as its mandate to train the health workforce for the country.
He said the University had done a lot in terms of manpower development for health and “it is for this that we think we have done so well and to look back at what we have done and to project what we think we can do for the future.”
Prof Tagbor said they were going to work very hard to make UHAS the first choice for anybody who would want to pursue any programme in health as well as UHAS becoming an influential place where the products would be heading divisions in the Ministry of Health and Ghana Health Service, and work to grow UHAS’ reach nationwide in the next decade.
Professor Paul Amuna, Dean of the School of Public Health, said the Ministry of Health and the Ghana Health Service were stakeholders the University had worked with adding that, students and graduates of UHAS were found at every Health Directorate nationwide which was a major contribution to the health system.
He said the confidence of parents in the University by sending their wards to receive training had also helped in the success of UHAS while noting that they continued to talk to parents, and engage communities and schools about the University and things they were doing.
Prof Amuna lauded the University’s position as the third-ranked University in Ghana, 41st in Africa and within the top 2,000 Universities in the world adding “that tells you about the impact we are making.”
The Celebration, themed: “The Role of Specialised Universities in National Development” is expected to come off in July, this year.
The University as part of the anniversary activities would commission the Professor Kofi Anyidoho Auditorium, engage senior high schools in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), hold health examinations, blood donation exercises, and sports activities and Healthy Life promotion.
Other activities include outdooring the University’s laboratory complex which would be the biggest and most specialised in West Africa, commissioning of the University student hostels and Basic School, special anniversary congregation to graduate the first group of pharmacy doctors and awards of honorary degrees.
The University of Health and Allied Sciences, Ho (UHAS) was established by an Act of Parliament (Act 828 in December 2011) and envisioned to become pre-eminent research and oriented health educational institution dedicated to community service with the main campus including the central administration in Ho and a second campus located in Hohoe.
It started operations in September 2012 with 157 students but currently, has a student population of 7,678 and a staff strength above 900 made up of teaching and non-teaching.
UHAS is the first public university to be established in the Volta Region of Ghana and is so far the only state university dedicated to the training of healthcare professionals in Ghana.
The University currently runs 24 undergraduate programmes in six schools and two Institutes namely, the School of Allied Health Sciences, School of Basic and Biomedical Sciences, School of Medicine, School of Nursing and Midwifery, School of Public Health, School of Pharmacy and Institute of Health Research and Institute of Traditional and Alternative Medicine.
The School of Public Health is located on the Hohoe Campus, using as incubating facilities the former Onchocerciasis Chemotherapy Research Centre (OCRC), Hohoe Municipal Hospital.
SPH is designed to provide innovation and vision to education and training that will transform the health of Ghanaians and is expected to produce learners who are ‘health systems’ ready, service and research-oriented and dedicated to attaining universal health coverage for Ghanaians.
It is currently organised into four departments: Department of Epidemiology & Biostatistics, Department of Family and Community Health, Department of Health Policy, Planning and Management and Department of Population and Behavioural Sciences.
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