Flooding cuts off access to Mankessim Hospital

Access to healthcare at the Mankessim Jubilee Hospital in the Central Region has come to a standstill as the entrance to the facility has been cut by flood.

Nurses and patients are stranded at both sides of the stretch, as no one is able to either access the facility or visit the community from the hospital.

A stretch of about 100 metres, being a section of the road to the hospital, has been submerged in the water flowing as a result of a downpour on Monday night at Mankessim, Saltpond and their environs.

A stranded and frustrated nurse who could not get to the hospital told Citi News, “Because of the flood, I cannot go to work, and those who are sick too we cannot attend to them. We have to stay at home because we cannot cross it, and if there is someone there but no nurse is going there, how can we attend to them?”

Some young men in the area who offered to carry people to cross the flood charged between GHC 5 and GHC 10, while those who were unable to cross it went back home. Others also visited other hospitals in the Mfantseman Municipality.

A pregnant woman, Ekua, said, “I am not well and I have to be at the hospital for my drugs, but because of the flood, I cannot get there. I am appealing to the authorities to help construct this stretch so that this thing will not occur again”.

The Mankessim Health Centre or the Jubilee Hospital, was constructed in 2007, and has been serving residents of Mankessim and its surrounding villages.

The hospital has been the preferred health centre for people in the area, but for some years now, residents have been at the mercy of a poor road network leading to the facility.
Construction work on the stretch started before the 2016 elections, but the project was abandoned just after the elections.

Residents told Citi News the flooding occurs every year, and that attempts to get the attention of the Mfantseman Municipal Assembly to construct the bridge on the stretch have been unsuccessful.

A resident and board member of the facility, Bishop Okanto Davis also expressed concern about the situation.

“This this thing, I understand, happens every three years or so. The covert there should be reconstructed other than that we will be having this problem every now and then.”

credit: citinewsroom