Pregnant women boycott health care over open treatment

The poor state of the only health facility at Assin Anhweansu in the Assin district of the Central region is affecting health delivery in the area with many pregnant women preferring to stay at home than seek medical care until they deliver their babies.

The women are avoiding medical care at the health post because they cannot stand the trauma of being treated in the open

The women say they feel embarrassed when their bodies are exposed to passers-by during medical examinations in a rented room which is serving as the Community-based Health Planning Services (CHPS) Centre which hosts 200 patients on the average, each day.

Even though a CHPS centre should have at least a room each for antenatal care, family planning, weighing and an Out-Patients Department (OPD), the facility located at Assin Anhweansu, a cocoa farming community, 21-kilometres north-east of Assin Foso, has just a single room.

The facility which has been in use since 2013 and serves over 5,000 residents in over five catchment areas, has only a shed at the front where patients sit, one weak bed and a medium-sized freezer for storing vaccines, leaving only a small space for a table.

Nurses at the facility who appear frustrated with the poor situation at the facility told Starr News health care could be jeopardised completely if government doesn’t step in to complete the abandoned CHIP Compound which has been under construction since 2013. They added the owner of the room they are operating from has threatened to eject them over non payment of monthly rent of GHC60 over the last six years.

Efforts to get the authorities in the area to address the challenge, they explained, have proven futile.

Head of the facility Kofi Mensah told Starr News their situation is dire.

” Because we are close and inside the community, normally we are supposed to have privacy but here, there is no privacy like you’re seeing. The woman you’re looking at is pregnant, we want to attend to her but those around will see whatever we are doing on her. If it were you or your wife would you allow your wife to expose her stomach like that? We want a better place where we can have an OPD and other rooms to take care of the women,” he told Starr News’ Kwaku-Baah Acheamfour.

Some of the pregnant women who spoke to Starr News said they refuse to visit the hospital because of the situation there. They appealed to government to do something drastic about their predicament so as to create a conducive environment for them to access health care.