Encroachers threatening Central Regional Hospital

The Central Regional Hospital has described as a worrying trend, the situation where many people are brought in dead (b.i.d), unfairly raising the mortality rate of the Hospital and called on health facilities to refer cases beyond them timely to save lives.

Dr. Daniel Asare, the Medical Director in charge of the Hospital said, last year, 80 ‘b.i.ds’ were recorded at the hospital, and that this was not the best because: “we are to treat the sick and not to resurrect the dead”.

He said this when the Central Regional Minister, Mr. Samuel Sarpong, visited the Hospital on Wednesday.

Dr Asare said the Hospital, which is a referral point, had strategized to improve upon its services to ensure quality care for its patients.

Consequently, an electronic filing of patients records had been put in place where files are retrieved within ten minutes instead of the usual two hours when it was done manually, reducing the waiting period of seeing the doctor at the Out Patient Department (OPD) from six to three hours.

He said the Hospital was planning to retain all the 42 newly trained medical doctors who will pass out next week from the University Of Cape Coast School Of Medical Sciences, for at least one year to help address the shortage of doctors at the Hospital.

It had, therefore, appealed to the Regional Administration and the Cape Coast Metropolitan Assembly, to as a matter of urgency, work to halt activities of encroachers who are fast developing the Hospital land meant for expansion, despite several warnings to restrain them.

He explained that since the Hospital had been upgraded into a teaching hospital, it was imperative that its facilities are expanded to meet the standard requirement of possibly a 1,000 bed hospital in the near future.

But the situation looked bleak as the Minister and his entourage toured the Hospital and realized that developers had taken over and building at a fast rate, and warned those on site to stop work or have their structures demolished after completion.

Dr Asare called for more houses to be constructed for nurses, doctors and other paramedical staff whilst its existing aging and dilapidated infrastructure renovated and improved upon for efficient delivery of health care services.

Currently, it has 360 beds, which is envisaged to be increased to 400 by the end of the year and is expected to achieve its strategic vision of developing into a Centre of excellence by 2020.

The hospital is the only public health facility with a total nursing care in the country, meaning patients on admission are given 100 percent care by nurses and not their relatives whilst it also runs 24-hour services.

“We need to rehabilitate and expand some departments and units and double the number of staff like nurses, doctors, midwives, currently woefully inadequate for a Teaching Hospital,” he said, and appealed to the Government to assist the hospital with funding to enable it to undergo full transformation.

He enumerated other challenges of the Hospital to include maternal mortality, early teen pregnancy, inadequate financial support from Central Government and shortage of staff.

Dr Asare appealed for the road to a new hostel built about five years ago in the Hospital for the students of the Cape Coast Midwifery and Nursing Training School to be constructed whilst the hostel is furnished and water supply extended to it to enable the school house its first years there.

Mr. Sarpong for his part, commended the staff for its rapid response to emergency cases and appealed to the authorities to pay serious attention to complaints, which he said are useful guides to help the Hospital to correct its mistakes.

He said the road to the hostel had been awarded on contract whilst a borehole will soon be sunk.