Govt orders release of GH¢3m to KATH

Page 51: Daily Graphic, March 23, 2012 Story: Albert K. Salia THE government has directed the release of GH¢3 million to the management of the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) for the purchase of essential drugs and medical consumables. The National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) is to release GH¢2 million while the Ministry of Health (MoH) issues GH¢1 million to the management to address the immediate challenges which have compelled junior doctors to withdraw their services at the hospital. In an interview with the Daily Graphic in Accra, the Minister of Health, Mr Alban Bagbin, bemoaned the poor maintenance culture and poor management practices at the hospital as those factors were largely responsible for the deterioration of equipment at the hospital. Doctors at the hospital have since Monday withdrawn their services to protest poor and inadequate services. The doctors are unhappy with the current state of the hospital, especially the accident and emergency units, the unreliable power and water supply and the non-availability of medicines. Mr Bagbin said a directive had been issued to the NHIA and the MoH finance departments to make the money available to address the immediate needs of the hospital. He, however, appealed to the doctors to return to work while the issues were dealt with. Acknowledging the challenges at the hospital, Mr Bagbin said the KATH served both the middle belt and northern parts of the country, which put enormous pressure not only on the facility, but the workers as well. He said Ghanaians needed not to lose sight of the fact that the KATH was an old structure and therefore required a lot of work before it could stand up to the test of time. He noted that most offices had been relocated to the newly inaugurated Accident and Emergency Centre of the hospital because of the unfriendly nature of where they were located. He said the oxygen plant was under-performing because it was very old. Mr Bagbin did not spare the management of the hospital, including the heads of departments and sub-management, for not living up to their task. “The management is not only the Chief Executive. It includes the doctors themselves who head various sub-management units,” he added. According to him, there was an “Essential Drug Revolving Fund” to be used to address some of these challenges and wondered why that of KATH had no funds. In view of that, he said, the government had undertaken some emergency steps to address the constraints, including the provision of four mechanised boreholes and installation of two stand-by generators with a total capacity of 1000 KVA. He said equipment such as CT scan, a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and ultra-sound, worth $7.5 million, had already been installed at the hospital while a new eye centre would be inaugurated in June, this year. According to him, suppliers of the CT scan and MRI equipment were currently training the staff of the hospital on the use and maintenance of the equipment. He said $4.7 million worth of equipment was also to be installed at the Radiotherapy and Nuclear Medicine Centre to put the hospital in perfect shape. For the long-term planning, Mr Bagbin said the government had proposed the construction of a regional hospital and the construction of a teaching hospital at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) to ease the pressure on the KATH. Mr Bagbin said some investors had already held discussions with the Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, regarding the construction of a teaching hospital at the KNUST while land was being secured for the construction of the regional hospital.