News:
July 15, 2011
The Deputy Minister of Health Rojo Mettle Nunu has given the strongest assurance yet to the residents of Tema and its environs that renovation works on the Tema general hospital will commence immediately after the necessary specification works have been completed.
According to the minister, feasibility studies of the necessary drawings and architectural work are being done to give to bring the hospital to a standard befitting a general hospital status.
He was responding to questions from the floor of parliament on the deplorable state of the Tema general raise by the member of Tema East Irene Naa Torshie Addo.
The member, Naa Torshie Addo questioned the delay in the start of the supposed renovation work on the said health facility. She said the house has long approved an amount of $8m for the purpose and wondered why it has taken this long for contract on the project to be awarded.
Facilities at the hospital are in a sorry state, expectant mothers lie on the bear floor, as the few beds available are just not enough to for the growing numbers of expectant mothers. As though that was not enough doctors for the various departments of the hospital are cramped in one room, thereby making nonsense of the privacy of patients.
She further lamented the poor state of preservation of death bodies at the morgue, stating that the cooling systems are not functioning and the capacity too small to accommodate the regular influx of dead bodies. So poor is the system at the morgue that mice eat some bodies which are poorly preserved.
This she said has brought undue pressure on the health personnel at post at the hospital not to mention the decline in patronage by patrons who would rather seek better health care from private facilities.
To retain the staff of the facility some of whom are threatening to vacate their post to join private health institutions, the member for the area called on the government, Ministry of Health and the Ghana Health Service to as a matter of urgency put in place the needed mechanisms to enable the renovation work on the hospital to commence.
Arojah Amadi-Ferguson/ghanamps.gov.gh