Central drug storage fire outbreak is a "disaster" - GHS

The Director General of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), Dr Ebenezer Appiah Denkyira, has described Tuesday morning’s fire outbreak at the Tema Central Medical Stores as a disaster which was going to affect health delivery greatly.

He said although they were yet to assess the extent of damage at the scene, it will certainly have a terrible effect on drug supply in Ghana.

“That is going to be a disaster, because it means now our daily consumption, we will not be able to get it. So maybe we may quickly have to bring our partners, both local and abroad to be able to estimate how much we need and then see whether we can procure items locally,” Dr Appiah Denkyira told Accra based radio station, Joy FM.

“What it means is that we are going to run short of medications and facilities so far as the medical store is concerned, because that is the place we have been keeping all our consumables,” he said.

According to Dr Appiah Denkyira, the store contains all sorts of drugs from malaria, anesthetic, medications, consumables, hospital equipment and beds.

He said the only thing was that, “we’ve got some stock within the regions, so we will fall on that.”

The Central Medical Stores in Tema, a depot for medical supplies in Ghana, caught fire Tuesday morning.

Located at the Tema Heavy Industrial Area, the medical stores is a big drug storage and distribution outlet belonging to the Ghana Health Service (GHS). 

Fire fighters, at the time of publishing this report, were still battling the inferno, which started at about 9:45am Tuesday.