Western Region: Low patronage of Public hospitals affecting internally generated funds

Attendance to the outpatients department (OPD) of many public health facilities in the Western Region has been greatly impacted by the coronavirus disease (COVID-19).

Hospitals, which hitherto saw more than 350 to 400 outpatients visiting daily are now recording between 70 and 100 visits.

Many are not reporting for scheduled appointments for the fear of COVID-19 infection, while the numbers for surgery remain very low.

One of the critical facilities in the region, the Half-Assini Government Hospital in the Jomoro District, which saw an influx of patients daily, has become a very quiet place.

The Medical Superintendent of the Hospital, Dr Frank Agbemordzi, said: “Our OPD sometimes drops to about 70 from more than the 300 a day we used to record before this period.”

Funding affected

Confirming the cument trend to the Daily Graphic, the Medical Director of the Effia-Nkwanta Regional Referral Hospital, Dr Joseph K. Tambil, said the low OPD attendance had affected the internally generated funds (IGF) which was mostly used to support the operations of government hospitals.

 “Unfortunately, revenue has gone down drastically. We do not have any emergency fund to cushion us as our revenue dips,” he said.

 He explained that the income being generated did not match their soaring expenditure.

“The fact is that our expenses have gone up; we have to buy personal protective equipment (PPE) more frequently than before in order to ensure the safety of our staff, the facility and visitors.

The doctor in charge of the Takoradi Hospital, popularly known as European Hospital, Dr Fred Adjei Otubuah, also stated that “the reduction in patronage is affecting our IGF and funds from the health insurance and that is also impacting on our expenditure and operations.”

Self-medication

Health officials are also worried that people may be self-medicating, a situation which they indicated could pose other health challenges as most people might be diagnosing wrongly.

Dr Tambil stressed that self-medication could result in other health complications.

“Some conditions present simple symptoms which people may mistake for malaria or others and thus self medicate.

 “If people continue to self-medicate and refuse to come to the facilities for management, after COVID-19, there will be a lot of complicated cases to manage,” he stated.

Dr Tambil  assured the public of their safety as all the safety protocols were strictly in force to protect both the staff of the facilities and the clients.

Restriction

At the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak in Ghana, a number of public health facilities announced that they were restricting visits to their facilities and Dr Tambil believes that may have affected attendance in the Western Region.

“In the regions, we did not suspend services – what we did was to create a reception area, where every visitor to the facility got to wash his or her hands, have their temperatures taken and redirected.”

“Unfortunately, the public misunderstood the suspension of OPD service by some huge facilities in Accra and Kumasi (Korle Bu & KATH) to be a directive and they are not reporting their conditions at the hospitals,” he explained.

Public perception

A number of people the Daily Graphic spoke to were emphatic that they might contract COVID-19 from the hospital so they preferred self-medication.

In addition, there is the perception that health workers are contracting the infection.

Many of them said they had visited the pharmacy to get medication for their ailments.

“Before COVID-19, I would quickly report to the hospital with my headache or fever but last week, I just went to the pharmacy to get some medication for malaria,” Mr Bentil said.

Ms Alice Mensah also said: “I go to one of the hospitals in town but I learnt some of the nurses and doctors there have tested positive, so I do not go.

“At the beginning, the health facilities were strict on people coming over to report their ailments because they said it was risky as they could not tell who was positive or not.

“Now, the doctors and nurses themselves are also being infected, so I will prefer to stay at home if my condition is not that serious,” she added.