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THE CHEREPONI district in the Northern region is likely to suffer from high maternal deaths and child morbidity rates if the shortage of doctors that has hit the area is not addressed immediately, health officials have warned. The Chereponi Polyclinic currently has one doctor at post since the facility was upgraded to a status B hospital. Checks by the paper reveal that last year, the doctor attended to 29,000 sick persons on admission. The implication here is that, expectant mothers and emergency cases will have to be rationed by the lone ranger, which, inadvertently, could lead to the death of a woman in labour or a child suffering from malaria. Expressing his frustrations in an interview with the DAILY HERITAGE, the health services administrator at the Chereponi Polyclinic, Aloysius Bokuma, explained that the doctor to population ratio at Chereponi is 65,000. He added that the doctor-to-patient ratio in the district keeps skyrocketing; a breakdown he stated was �25,000 in 2011, adding that the figure jumped to 27,000 in 2012 and 29,000 for the year 2013.� According to him, the national average of the doctor-to-population ratio may have a different outlook, but, when one looks at it from district to district, it is worse off. Mr. Bokuma lamented that the doctor to population ratio at Chereponi is terrible. He said since the opening of the Chereponi Polyclinic, the facility has never had two doctors working at post before. On what accounted for the phenomenon, the administrator said the deprived nature of Chereponi is discouraging doctors from accepting postings to the area. He claimed that the trend sends a bad signal in the sense that �not everyone in Ghana is able to access better health care.� He appealed to the government to reconsider scaling motivation packages for health workers to attract them to the deprived areas. An O.P.D. nurse, Imoro Yakubu, also explained that the hospital has been experiencing high patient attendance due to high incidence of malaria. According to him, during December to April, there are a lot of malaria cases that are reported at the facility. �It is stressful here my brother, I handle at least 200 people daily before closing for the day. I am sometimes forced to work overtime due to the numbers of people that keep pouring in,� he added.