Absence of a health care center a major concern for residents of Tsledom, surrounding communities

Correspondence from Eastern Region

Residents of Tsledom and surrounding communities in the Lower Manya Krobo Municipal of the Eastern Region are appealing to the government to provide a healthcare facility for the community to serve as a first-aid center to address their basic healthcare needs.

Due to the absence of any form of health facility to address their needs, the people of Tsledom, Okotor, Gortsonor, Takunya, Gbagblam, and Yede say the situation forces them to travel to seek medical care at nearby Tortibo or Akosombo whenever the need arises.

However, the roads linking the mountainous farming community without electricity to nearby others are in a deplorable state and this compounds the situation.

The distraught residents say the terrible nature of the roads made it difficult for drivers to ply that stretch, adding that the situation was resulting in loss of lives.

Dadematse (community leader) of Tsledom, Dadematse Etsemo Atter lamenting over the problem in an interview with GhanaWeb at Tsledom said residents who sustained injuries in the farms or got bitten by snakes were rushed to distant major hospitals for treatment.

“This is a big problem for the community, if people suffer snake bites or get injured by a cutlass while on the farm, it becomes a big problem,” he said. “We send the victims to either the VRA hospital or the Atua Government Hospital. You can imagine what happens during emergencies when we have to go all the way to Akosombo or Atua, before we get there, the person is already dead.”

According to him, pregnant women were at a higher risk of losing their lives during delivery as members of the community are forced to employ improvised means to get them to the nearest health posts when they are in labor.

In some instances, he said they lost either the baby or the mother. “If a pregnant woman must deliver for instance, we have to carry her on wooden planks, before we get to the hospital, we may either lose the mother or the baby and this is a big problem,” the traditional leader lamented bitterly.

According to the Dadematse, several discussions with relevant authorities over the years for the provision of a healthcare center for the community have proven futile.

He, therefore, appealed to the local Assembly and other stakeholders to as a matter of urgency establish a health post for the people.

Though a site has been allocated for the project to take off, GhanaWeb on a visit to the place met a bare site two years after the allocation.

School Health Education Programme (SHEP) coordinator for the Tsledom M/A basic school, Frederick Nortey told GhanaWeb that the absence of a befitting health facility in the community brought a lot of stress on the existing health room in the school.

According to him, health conditions that must ideally be sent to better-equipped facilities ended up being reported at the school due to the situation.

Mr. Nortey said some adults in the communities also fell on the school facility for drugs for minor ailments.

He however appealed for the health room to be stocked periodically with the necessary medications and logistics to enable it to serve its purpose.

He also appealed to local and international agencies to come on board and put up a befitting health facility in the community to address the health needs of the people.