The Wa East District Director of the Ghana Health Services (GHS), Dr Pascal Kingsley has lamented bitterly over the lack of a district hospital in the district saying it hampers the delivery of healthcare services.
Dr Kingsley made the lamentation during a stakeholder consultative meeting on adolescent reproductive health by the UWR Youth Parliament in Bulenga.
He said the Wa East District was deprived in many areas and lamented that over 14 years of creation, the district cannot still lacks a hospital that can handle surgical operations.
“Our district, Wa East, is a deprived district. We’ve to face that reality. We’re deprived in many many ways: social amenities, health amenities and what have you.
“We’ve been a district for over 14 good years, yet we do not have a hospital or a facility that is able to offer surgical operations,” Dr Kingsley lamented.
He recounted an instance where he had to perform surgery on an expectant mother in an ambulance but unfortunately lost both the mother and the unborn baby.
“Those of you who can quite remember my first time in Bulenga, I had to perform an operation on a pregnant woman in an ambulance on a pregnant woman because she was referred here and could not deliver and needed theatre services for delivery.
“We referred this client to Wa Municipal Hospital, the ambulance was here but the client was not in a good state at all, I had to join the ambulance to try my best to resuscitate her while on our way to Wa Municipal Hospital.
“We got to Goripie and the client died but we felt we could still save the baby. What happened? We stopped, bought a razor blade, [see how cruel that is], blade, and operated on this woman thinking we would save the baby, in the ambulance, without gloves, nothing.
“We save the baby alright, the baby came out but needed oxygen support, the ambulance didn’t have that. Unfortunately, the baby died! The mother, too, died!” Dr Kingsley narrated remorsefully.
He indicated that if there had been a facility to handle such complications, the woman and the baby would have died.
Dr Kingsley said his priority when he first came to the district was to establish a facility “even if we cannot call a hospital but a facility where we can operate our pregnant women, our brothers and fathers with hernias.”
He, therefore, said he had caused to be partitioned a maternity ward at the Bulenga Health Centre for surgical purposes.
He indicated that a medical doctor has been posted to the facility but lamented that lack of accommodation is keeping the doctor from assuming the post.
Dr Kingsley, thus, appealed to stakeholders and district authorities to come to the assistance of the health directorate.