Government to support HTH with infrastructure and equipment - Agyeman Manu

Mr Kwaku Agyeman Manu, Minister of Health on Wednesday said his outfit is poised to support the Ho Teaching Hospital (HTH) to a befitting status in term of infrastructure, equipment, technology and human resource needs.

He said we are working hard to secure funding to retool to enhance service delivery in the areas of CT scan, anaesthesia machines and getting the MRI back to operation.

Mr Manu was speaking in a speech read on his behalf by Mr Lawrence Lawson, Deputy Director at the Ministry, during the 2019 Annual Performance Review of the HTH in Ho.

It was under the theme, "Setting the Agenda for Innovative Tertiary Healthcare: Caring for Everyone, Learning from Everyone", is being attended by major stakeholders in including the traditional authorities.

Mr Manu announced that in 2019 alone, a total of 274 new health personnel were recruited and posted including medical officers, nurses, administrators, and laboratory scientists to augment the human resource capacity of the HTH.

He said soon the HTH would have all of its requisite facilities for the various departments to handle all ailments to avert the situation where patients were transferred to Korle Bu with its attendant difficulties.

The Minister urged management and staff of the HTH to continue to work harder, tailored at making the facility a preferred choice for medical care.

He therefore urged all agencies under the Ministry of Health to adopt the agenda for innovative Tertiary Healthcare to assist the Ministry achieve its vision and universal health coverage for all.

Dr Daniel Asare, Chief Executive Officer of The Korle Bu Teaching Hospital said his outfit would continue to strike partnership with the private sector to raise the needed infrastructure to deliver health at a cheaper cost with time.

He said Korle Bu had gone technological and exploring more to bring healthcare closer to the people including its robotic surgery mechanisms cardio bypass and eye treatment, in addition to its state-of-art renal equipment that could be compared with facilities abroad.

He called for diversification of strategies and funding models and not over-rely on government funds, which may be inadequate or late in coming.

Dr Asare said Korle Bu would be 100 years in two years’ time and that made it one of the oldest hospitals in the country and in the days ahead would present five cardiotocograph machine to the HTH from a "big brother".

Dr John Tampouri, acting CEO of HTH, said management resolved to pursue other innovative programmes and policies that would bring robust transformation to healthcare delivery and as such created directorates to champion its strategy.

He said out-patient department attendance increased by 2.69 percent from 159,866 to 164,173, admission at the emergency department increased by 18.14 percent, resulting in bed occupancy rate from 65.3 percent to 88.7 percent.

He said its Internally Generated Fund (IGF) had been deployed judiciously for projects in the ICT, procurement and construction of facilities in the cardio, x-ray, dental, patient monitors as well as air conditioners.

Dr Tampuori said regarding institutional maternal mortality, there has been an increase from 856.5 per 100,000 live births to 1,064.9 per 100,000 live births with 19 out of 20 maternal deaths coming from peripheral facilities in the year under review.

He said management and staff were poised to improve in all spheres and eager to develop a medical Centre of Excellence instead of departments.

He enumerated the Hospital's challenges as inadequate specialists, lack of clinical, residential and office accommodation, inadequate means of transport as well as obsolete equipment.

Mr Charles Agbeve, Member of Parliament for Agotime-Ziope and member of the Health Committee on behalf of the Committee, said challenges of infrastructure, health financing and staffing were major roadblocks to healthcare delivery in the country and advocated for innovative ways to address these.

He identified a worrying trend of Accra and the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital alone taking about 52 percent of doctors posting in the country, Komfo Anomye also responsible for some 18 percent with the rest of the country having to share the remaining 10 percent and called for stringent decentralisation.

Professor John Owusu Gyapong, Vice-Chancellor of University of Health and Allied Sciences, said HTH and UHAS were like siamese twins and would continue to collaborate.

He lamented that UHAS could boost of two cardio specialists professionals yet sub-standard accommodation continued to make it difficult to have surgery.

He said due to the sub-standard accommodation, patients are rather moved to Korle Bu, when these could have been done in Ho if the facility was of standard and called for investment in that area to forestall this challenge.

There were solidarity messages from other CEOs of Tamale, Komfo Anokye and Cape Coast Teaching hospitals and the Dr Archibald Letsa, Volta Regional Minister.