No Bed Syndrome: Health sector lacks central command system – OccupyGhana

A leading member of OccupyGhana Ace Anan Ankomah has said that one of the ways government can solve the ‘no bed syndrome’ is to adopt a central command system to hospitals for emergency cases.

According to him, the central command system should serve as a communication channel that would link various hospitals during emergencies to solve the problem.

Speaking on Citi TV point of view show Ace Anan Ankomah said, “if we don’t fix the system and accept that the no bed syndrome is possibly a mask of a more serious problem, then we would build all of these hospitals and still have no bed because there is no central command that is saying that there is 20 beds available here, 15 available there, 3 available here so that if there is an emergency we would call this hospital and say we are bringing this patient there.”

The social activist explained if the right collaborative structures are not put in place, the situation where patients will be transferred to hospitals which lack beds cannot be eliminated although, he stated, there may be beds elsewhere.

“So that coordination is what we need,” he said.

Meanwhile, a Lecturer at the University of Ghana Dr. Michael Segbefia has stressed that, to prevent the problem of the lack of beds at hospitals, not all medical conditions necessarily needed attention at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital.

He emphasized that the pressure can be lifted from the central hospitals when patients are admitted at other hospitals capable of handling health cases.

Except on rare instances he said, “There are certain conditions that other hospitals cannot treat but most conditions can be treated by most hospitals. If somebody is stabbed in the chest and the knife is in the heart, we know there is only one national cardiothoracic center at the moment so that means the patient has to be attended to whether there are beds or not they have to accept that patient. Somebody has diabetes, other hospital can manage diabetes so that person doesn’t have to go to Korle-Bu Hospital for illness to be managed.”

Citi FM and OccupyGhana On July 30, 2018 petitioned President Nana Akufo-Addo to demand the operationalization of all newly built but abandoned healthcare facilities.

The petitioners are also pushing for a comprehensive Emergency Response System (ERS) in Ghana.

The two petitioners contend that the matters at hand have “reached a crisis point.”

“The matters now require drastic measures, one of which is our request herein that the President takes urgent steps to operationalise the facilities and institute the ERS throughout Ghana.”

They urged the president to “put in place and publish a clear roadmap with timelines for addressing the matters.”