Sleepless nights in the Children's Ward

The delightful ambiance of the maternity ward of Ho Municipal Hospital appears to be the magic attracting men to accompany their wives to the ward or visit them.

Some women openly confess how they wish they could get pregnant twice in a year to have their husbands visit them in that lovely environment.

Unmarried women are not left out of the fantasies. The well-tiled air-conditioned ward with beautiful beds fixed with mosquito nets is their talk about, with some playacting pregnancies – a proof of their desire to be pregnant so as to avail themselves of this enviable facility.

The opposite, however, is the situation at the children’s ward of the same hospital. Loud cries from children in the ward last Friday evening drew me from the hospital's main gate to the building housing the sick children.

The entrance of the ward was choked. Some of the children and their parents wandered about with worry written on their faces.

Only few of them responded to my greetings with stern looks, confirming my suspicion that there was a problem. The cries became louder and compelled me to rush to the ward.

I met Sammy, Kodzovi and Ama (not their real names), two, five and seven-year olds respectively, wailing in Room Two.

They engaged in a seeming ‘marathon’ wailing competition with Ama’s shrill voice piercing the ear as their parents looked on helplessly.

“It’s been sleepless nights the past three days.” Serwa, Sammy’s mother said as she broke down, her already heavy eyes filled with tears.

Becky, Ama’s mother continued: “The mosquitoes here are giving us sleepless nights. We don’t know what to do.”

I quickly joined the ‘rescue’ team to console the children with some soft drinks I had ‘armed’ myself with.

Before long, I heard some irritating noise around my ears and received my first share of the mosquito bites. The battle of swinging one’s arms to ward off mosquitoes began.

It then dawned on me why some of the children with their parents littered the entrance to the ward that evening, throwing their hands over their shoulders in a battle against mosquitoes.

Beds in the ward have no mosquito nets and repellants seemed to have no answers to the mosquito attacks.

Becky, Kodzovi’s mother said, “We’ve not had good sleep for the past three days. It is worsening the condition of our children. The mosquito coils are also making our children cough.”

This writer was told that though the ward had some mosquito nets, they were not fixed because the beds were old fashioned with no provisions made for the fixing of the nets.

Madam Gladys Krahene, Nurse in charge of the ward said all the 15 children on admission had malaria and anemia due to mosquito bites.

She said, “We are all suffering. It is not the children alone. We battle day and night with mosquitoes.”

The ‘rescue’ mission was successful that evening, but temporarily because, the mosquito bites were becoming ‘unprecedented’ and I had to run to enable me stay alive to tell the story.

Early the following morning, I dashed to the nurses’ station to cover a presentation of assorted items to the ward by the Students Representative Council (SRC) of the Evangelical Presbyterian University (EPUC) and faced more complaints from the nurses. Some of them I sighted the previous evening with cloths and handkerchiefs driving mosquitoes away while dressed in trousers, long dresses and socks.

The fate of children at the Volta Regional Hospital is not different from that of the Municipal Hospital.

A source at the Regional Hospital, a referral facility, said the babies’ unit of 14 beds had no mosquito nets apart from plastic covers attached to the baby cots.

The source said the Hospital has less than ten mosquito nets for 22 beds at the children’s unit. Here too, the few nets available were not fixed because the sizes were too small for the beds, exposing the children to mosquito bites.

Perhaps what should engage the concern of all, particularly the relevant authorities, is the likelihood that the situation might not be different in other health facilities across the country.

The major concern remains how children brought to the wards for treatment from other ailments have to contend with malaria in addition.

Another worry is how some nurses shy away from being assigned to those wards due to the worrying ‘mosquito situation’.

Michael J. Breus, a Clinical Psychologist and a Diplomat of the American Board of Sleep Medicine said: “sleep is no less important than food, drink or safety in the lives of children.”

Dr. Shelly Weiss, a Pediatrician and author of, “Better Sleep for your baby and child: A Parent’s step-by-step Guide to Healthy Sleep Habits,” essentially said less sleep, especially before the age of 41 months, had been found to increase abnormal behavioural and mental ability.

She said there was evidence that short sleep duration negatively affects the processing of food in the body leading to the development of obesity, insulin resistance, diabetes and cardiovascular diseases.

The situation in the children’s wards threatens Ghana’s hope of reducing by two-thirds by 2015, the under-five mortality rate as envisaged by the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) Four.

It appears lessons learnt in the implementation of the Roll Back Malaria (RBM) campaign are not being put to use at health facilities, which could dash the nation’s hope of reducing death and illness due to malaria disease by 75 per cent by 2015 as projected by the National Malaria Control Programme.

Two years away from the 2015 deadline, a good number of hospitals either do not have or do not use malaria diagnostic facilities (microscopes or Rapid Diagnostic Test kits) and only fewer numbers of children and pregnant women sleep under treated mosquito nets.

It is, therefore, important for the Ghana Health Service (GHS) to intensify its supervisory role and ensure that mosquito nets are provided for all wards in health facilities and fixed on the beds if Ghana is to achieve the target for MDG Four by 2015.

Health facilities must maintain a clean environment to prevent mosquitoes from invading the wards and the Out Patient Departments (O.P.Ds).

Indoor Residual Spraying (IRS) should be made a must for all wards.

Without doubt, Medical Directors have critical roles to play in ‘treating’ this situation with the seriousness it deserves, knowing that prevention of diseases is cheaper and easier than providing cure for them.

From afar, I can still hear the children in the hospital ward crying, and something must be done now to save their lives.