Coronavirus crippling blood donation, operations - Eastern Regional Hospital Director

The Medical Director of the Eastern Regional Hospital, Dr. Cardinal Newton, has bemoaned the havoc being caused by the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, especially to health institutions.

According to him, the COVID-19 pandemic has crippled the incomes and the general financial base of the Eastern Regioonal Hospital.

Dr. Newton made this knwon in an interview with Ghanaweb in Koforidua on Friday.

He averred that due to the COVID-19, over 80 percent of the blood donation sources of the Regional Hospital had been curtailed, thus rendering the blood bank almost a zero account.

"As a hospital we cannot survive without blood (in the blood bank). There are many critical cases that require blood (transfusion).

"This hospital gets 80% blood (donated) from the secondary schools but because of this virus, all these institutions are closed. What it means is that this hospital is losing 80% of its blood donation sources," he said.

He further expressed that, "This COVID-19 didn't come as a disease alone, it has come to cripple everything... everything in the hospital."

Dr. Newton indicated that a lot more patients, though sick, are staying home and are not visiting the hospital because of COVID-19.

He also indicated that people visiting the hospital for various purposes end up contributing to the financial base of the hospital, but are all not coming due to COVID-19.

"You don't have patients coming, where are you going to (make money)? It is when people come that you prepare insurance to be paid.

When people are not coming where do you get cash to run the hospital? So very soon you will be hearing that people are being retrenched," he said.

On laying off workers, Dr. Newton however was quick to allay fears, saying, "But we don't want to get there. I am 100% sure that Eastern Regional Hospital will not sack workers."