Officials at the Dansoman Polyclinic are calling for immediate relocation of the facility due to overcrowding and unhygienic conditions at its current location, which they say compromise health service delivery and endanger lives of patients.
They told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) that lives of many pregnant women, cholera patients, and others visiting the Polyclinic are under threat because of congestion and poor hygienic conditions.
Dr Felicia Anderson, Acting Medical Superintendent of the Polyclinic said overcrowding, poor ventilation and lack of water exposes patients, particularly, pregnant women to contagious diseases.
She said the facility manages only five beds for the adult wards and two for the children’s ward, while there is neither a delivery ward nor room and cholera patients are housed in tents fitted with only two wooden benches.
The tent is located closely to the polyclinic’s water tanks and the laboratory, and to Dr Anderson this creates additional health risk to both patients and health workers.
She said the lack of beds, wheelchairs, blood pressure monitors, benches, and weighing machines is also hindering successful delivery of quality health services to the teeming patients at the Polyclinic.
The Polyclinic, which was inaugurated in 1974, as the Dansoman Health Post, was later redesignated as a health centre and then upgraded in 2008 to a Polyclinic.
It serves about 242,192 clients from Dansoman Estates, Mataheko, Russia, SSNIT Flats, Darkuman, Awoshie, South Odorkor, Odorkor and Mpoase.
Dr Anderson said: “This facility now serves the whole of Dansoman, Agege, and people from Kasoa, Mallam and other places…They come here to receive healthcare, but we have very limited facilities.”
A visit by the GNA to the Polyclinic showed that nurses and in-patients are crammed in single narrow rooms with no ventilation while a gutter passing running through the records section emits a foul smell.
The Deputy Director of Nursing Services in-charge of the Polyclinic, Madam Mercy Sagoe, stated that the unhygienic conditions resulting from congestion and lack of water require a long lasting solution to enable clients receive better care.
Out-patients attendance at the Polyclinic in 2013 stood at 33,188, while as at the end of November 2014, the figure was hovering around 29,944, she said.
The hospital officials appealed to government, agencies, and corporate institutions to provide financial and logistical support to the polyclinic to move out of its current deplorable condition.
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