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The Nandom District Assembly in the Upper West Region, has said despite the significant progress it made in education development, it was still faced with several challenges.

Among them are inadequate number of trained teachers, decline in BECE results, and inadequate teaching and learning materials, especially core subjects.

Madam Rita Yorka, District Planning Officer, said there were also several uncompleted GET Fund projects and transfer of trained teachers out of the district, which had impacted negatively on education.

Madam Yorka who made these known at the Third Public Accountability Forum at Nandom, expressed disappointment that the district produced several medical doctors none of them was serving the people.

The district has to do with four doctors outside the region who are providing medical services to the people at the Nandom District Hospital.

The forum was organized to show the level of progress the district had utilized its Common Fund and its Internal Generated Fund, and also subject it public scrutiny and views to make the district a shining example.

Madam Yorka said the district needed more public health officers to educate the people on preventable diseases, while insufficient finances from central government and delay in disbursement of National Health Insurance Scheme claims were also challenges in the health sector.

She, however, said despite the inadequate number of medical doctors to man health facilities in the district, it made significant progress against most of its health indicators, especially reducing the proportion of deaths contributed by malaria from 23 in 2014 to 8.2 percent in 2015.

On Agriculture, she said the high cost of vaccination for poultry and livestock were major hurdles of animals' production for farmers.

“Inadequate number of field workers and delays in release of service fund to aid field workers in carry out activities affects field supervision,” she said.

Mr. Cuthbert Baba Kunpel, Nandom District Chief Executive, announced that because of the impressive performance, the district had moved from 179 to 96 in the District League recently released by UNICEF.

He tasked all decentralized departments to execute their work effectively and efficiently, to make the district a shining example in the region.