Daffiama District appeals for hospital

The Daffiama/Bussie/Issa District Director of Health, Mr Joseph Bolibie, has appealed for a district hospital to make quality health care more accessible to the people.

He said the four health centres in the district were under resourced in terms of equipment and personnel, and therefore, lacked the capacity to treat certain ailments that should not have warranted referrals to the regional hospital.

He said patients and pregnant women sometimes walked or travelled very long distances just to access healthcare services in view of the general needs that confronted the district, adding that a district hospital would be a big intervention in the district’s healthcare system and reduce the burden that usually overwhelmed the overstretched staff and resources of the regional hospital in Wa.

The items

He made the appeal at Daffiama in the Upper West Region when the Member of Parliament (MP) for Daffiama/Bussie/Issa, Mr Mathias Asoma Puozaa, donated medical items and office wares worth GH¢36,000 to the district health directorate for distribution to the various health centres in the district.

The items included 20 mattresses, 50 pillows with their cases, 50 bed sheets, one treatment trolley, one dressing trolley, two wheelchairs, two drip stands, two lying-in beds, two stretchers, two treatment steps and two kick buckets.

The office equipment were two steel filing cabinets, a laptop,  a desktop computer, a multi-purpose printer, a scanner and a photocopier.

Challenges

Mr Puozaa said while he acknowledged the challenges that faced most parts of the region in terms of healthcare, the donation was a direct response to the distress call from the district health directorate over the lack of basic items at the health centres.

“If out of necessity patients are compelled to use different sides of the same bed sheet because there are not enough to change them, we would not be solving the very reason why people visit the health centre,” he lamented.

MPs Fund

The items, procured with funds from the MP’s Health Facility Development Fund, were also to aid the administrative work of ­health centres.

The District Chief Executive for Daffiama/Bussie/Issa, Fidelis N. Zumakpeh, said although the equipment donated by the MP would not be enough to address all the concerns of the health system in the district, it was important that health personnel stayed committed to their work in order not to compound the health challenges that faced the people.

The head midwife at the Daffiama Health Centre, Madam Gladys Kpierekoh, expressed gratitude to the MP for his intervention, stressing that “it is a relief in many ways that will ease the pressure from various directions”.