Ledzokuku-Krowor Municipal Hospital face challenges
The Medical Superintendent of the Ledzokuku-Krowor Municipal Hospital, Dr Juliana Ameh, has urged the government to solve the water crisis facing the hospital.
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According to her, the hospital was struggling with water supply to the wards in the hospital.
“In collaboration with the National Security, we have sunk a borehole, fixed water storage tanks in various locations in the hospital and bought water pumping machines all in a bid to improve water supply to the wards, yet there is still a challenge as it remains difficult to pump water to some wards,” she told the Daily Graphic at a community forum aimed at improving services rendered by the hospital.
“We will appreciate it if the hospital could get direct service from the Ghana Water Company,” she added.
She said providing qualitative healthcare had become difficult for hospitals and clinics around the county for decades now, and that if the situation of inaccessibility to urgently required necessities was not addressed quickly, many health facilities might run down.
Aside the challenges it faced with water, Dr Ameh said, the hospital’s incinerator also needed to be emptied regularly as the current evacuation rate of twice a week was inadequate.
Residents’ complaint
The hospital was inaugurated on December 21, 2010. It is a hundred-bed capacity facility and was put up at a cost of $7.2 million.
It has a surgical, medical, dental, physiotherapy, ophthalmology and obstetric and gynaecology departments, among other facilities. The hospital was financed under a Chinese grant and built by the China Geo-Engineering Corporation.
The Ledzokuku-Krowor Municipal Hospital was established with the key objective to provide quality healthcare for the over one million people in Teshie and its environs and stem the high rate of infant and maternal mortality in the area.
Residents and clients of the hospital who turned up at the forum, however, complained about the poor attitude exhibited by some staff members of the hospital, especially towards patients.
Dr Ameh said the hospital would institute measures to improve the relationship between staff and patients of the hospital.
She said apart from organising orientation courses for staff, the hospital would institute an awards scheme to reward workers who worked hard.
The hospital currently has five physicians and eight specialist doctors who attend to more than 200,000 people a year, a situation Dr Ameh said put the hospital under a lot of pressure.
“There are a lot of projects to undertake to improve the quality of healthcare in the hospital, but we are constrained because of the lack of funds. The National Health Insurance Scheme does not readily reimburse us for work done,” she said.
Achievements of hospital
In spite of the challenges it faces, Dr Ameh said the hospital had all the add-ons of a general hospital, including specialist services, physiotherapy unit, laboratory and facilities for radiology.
She said the hospital also had a malaria research centre and a herbal medicine unit.