My heart was broken this morning when a young midwife from Akwatia called into the @benkoku hosted #citicbs [Citi Breakfast Show]. The discussion was on the inadequacy of ambulances in the country. According to reports, only 55 ambulances are functional when the country needs over 1,000.
The young midwife wanted the show host to interrogate the condition of the so-called 55 functional ambulances.
She told a story. She said just last week, a pregnant woman in labour had to be referred from her facility to a bigger one for medical attention since her situation was growing dire. She had been placed on oxygen support. One of those 55 ‘functioning’ ambulances was called in to transport her to the referred hospital. On their way, they ran out of oxygen! The emergency team decided to return to the smaller facility for help since they still had some distance to the bigger hospital.
Guess what! The pregnant lady in labour died upon reaching the smaller hospital. She died bcos the ambulance ran out of oxygen. The ambulance which was supposed to be an emergency facility did not have enough oxygen supply to sustain a woman in labour for just about one hour. And oxygen is basic. No hospital or emergency system should ever run out of it.
The baby died. The mother [pregnant woman] also died. She had two other young children. And a husband. A family has lost a baby, mother and wife. Now imagine the pain, misery and eternal loss of this family. The two young kids have lost the joy of growing up with their mother. Very needless death.
The very emotional midwife concluded by saying that our leaders don’t seem to care about the general citizenry. How 29 million Ghanaians are expected to share 55 ambulances is a difficult question. She concluded rather painfully that as healthcare workers, they are ready and prepared to work to save lives, but are not helped by the system [government] to do so. She wondered if a mass action from healthcare workers [not on salaries or allowances] on equipment and facilities, basic apparatus to make them help lives, will refocus attention of successive governments on the importance of the subject [I hope she is not traced and punished].
My submission is that, we have had many talks, workshops, conferences and discussions about equipping our Emergency Response Systems but we haven’t really moved beyond the talk. The road network, flow of traffic, maintenance culture, well-resourced emergency facilities, emergency phone lines, among other things, play roles in an effective response system. The scene at our hospitals is bad. We see patients sitting on the floor holding drips being administered to them. Pregnant women sleeping on the floor and other sad images. I surmise it appears overwhelming to our leaders so they just play around it in 4-year cycles. Systems are working elsewhere. Same can happen in Ghana.
While all this is going on we have a multimillion-dollar world class hospital like the University of Ghana Medical Centre [UGMC] idling bcos of a tussle between government and the University on who has to manage it. Other similar facilities around the country are wasting away! Whatever the problem is must be solved!
And if you ascribe politics, partisan politics to this post, then you are part of the problem. Politics is proving to be the problem. When someone makes a genuine observation, we first check to see where he belongs in the partisan divide before to go ahead to accept or disregard it. It is evil and problematic!
We need to sit up. We need to demand from leadership at least the basics. We cannot lose this fight. Posterity won’t be kind to us, if we fail.
See the University of Ghana Medical Centre [UGMC] photos below:
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By: Selorm Adonoo