The Deputy Minister of Health, Alexander Akwesi Acquah has urged his colleague politicians particularly Members of Parliament to desist from politicizing issues of health as that could hinder confidence in the health sector in the country.
Reacting to the Ranking Member on the Health Committee of Parliament, Kwabena Mintah Akandoh’s visit to the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital regarding the broken down elevators, Mr Acquah said the action of the Ranking Member smacks of someone with political motive than seeking to find genuine solution to the problem.
“My brother, health is health, we need to decouple health from our political issues”, he affirmed.
Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, he noted, is Ghana’s premier health facility that takes referrals from all other health facilities across the country, and anyone is likely to end there in search of health delivery. Therefore, it is not healthy to make the place look like a grave yard due to the negative image we give it, he said.
Mr. Acquah who was reacting on GhOne TV argued that instead of storming the place with cameras, Mr. Akandoh could have just called authorities at the facility to get briefing; and added that if the Ranking Member had done that, he would have been told that management was already working to solve the problem.
He asserts that that Korle Bu like any other institution has management that oversees the running of the facility and it was within their remits to find solution to the problem, and they were at it before Mr. Akandoh went to whip up public sentiment with the cameras that he sent there.
HE berates the action of the Ranking member saying it did not expose anything as the management was already aware and dealing with it.
“The Korle Bu administration knew about it and they’ve been working at it, Korle Bu has a CEO who has underlying managers, it doesn’t take the Minister or the deputy to know that Korle Bu’s lift is not working; and they are working at it. This is a regular routine maintenance”.
He said the traffic alone that uses the lift at the facility is quite on the high side and these breakdowns are expected from time to time, and management would always step in to make them functional again. “And so if for a moment the lifts are spoilt and the technicians are working at it, it doesn’t have to take honourable Akandoh, to come there before it is fixed; no it has been fixed, they were working on it, they had fixed some and they were working on the remaining ones.
He said this attempt to always make government look bad, is not helping the sector as the Ministry’s mandate goes beyond just fixing elevators.
The Deputy Minister who revealed that he equally patronizes the services of the Korle Bu Hospital because he carries out all his health check-ups in Ghana said the lifts works all the time, and reiterates that the traffic on it accounts for why it breaks down from time to time because it is a gadget.
Ghanamps.com
