Disaster at K'Bu Cardio

The state-own Daily Graphic reports that intermittent power outages at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital in Accra have destroyed equipment valued at millions of cedis and thousands of Deutschmarks at the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of the National Cardiothoracic Centre of the hospital.

The destroyed equipment include an automatic switch and transformer in a dialysis machine, the uninterrupted power supply (UPS) of a ventilator, both valued at 65,000 Deutsemarcks and 12 air conditioners which cost 96 million cedis.

Apart from this loss, the hospital could have suffered a major disaster when a ventilator - an artificial breathing machine at the unit - caught fire as a result of the persistent power cuts last Sunday.

Professor Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng, who conducted the paper round the ICU of the centre on Thursday explained that with the presence of oxygen tanks in the ward, if the fire had not been controlled as fast as it was, the oxygen could have aggravated the fire, causing it to spread to other parts of the hospital.

Dr E.A. Aniteye of the ICU said on Saturday March 24, the ward suffered continuous power outages and he, as a result directed that all patients in that ward be transferred to another ward and that was what saved the lives of the patients.