The Upper East Regional hospital’s department of Paediatric has launched the Needy Child Fund on its maiden Open Day celebration to cater for vulnerable children with life-threatening medical conditions.
According to the hospital, the essence of the fund is to cater for children whose medical conditions are not covered under the National Health Insurance Scheme.
Speaking at the launch of the fund, Medical Director of the hospital, Dr. Patrick Atobrah said, the fund will help avert needless deaths of vulnerable children with critical conditions and those without NHIS cards and expired cards.
“In almost all cases, these children end up on admission with life-threatening conditions but are unable to pay their bills. The continual accumulation of bills from these categories of clients is threatening the quality of health care provision.”
“In 2018, out of 149 patients who could not afford to pay their hospital bills, 48 from the children’s ward could not pay, in the first quarter of 2019. 34 patients from the children’s ward also could not pay”.
Mark Anthony Azongo, Paediatric Nurse Specialist at the Regional hospital said, the fund was necessitated by the increasing number of children whose parents couldn’t afford to foot medical bills of critical conditions and in some cases have led to the loss of lives of their children.
He was optimistic that, monetary contributions to the fund will save vulnerable children with life-threatening conditions from needless deaths.
“Within the past half year, 17 parents and caretakers have had to abscond with their children on admission because they have no valid insurance cards and couldn’t foot their hospital bills which amounted to GHC5,864.00.
“The number of parents with sick children referred from the department to the next level of management that cannot afford the cost of higher care continue to be on the rise. Sadly, we lost three of such innocent children in the last quarter through no fault of theirs, parents cannot afford the cost of care”.
He said, severe anaemia was one of the commonest conditions recorded in the Paediatric Department and appealed to the general public to donate blood to the hospital blood bank to save the lives of such children.
Upper East Regional Minister, Patience Paulina Abayage who pledged GHC10,000.00 to the fund commended the advisory board of the hospital for the initiative.
She was convinced the fund when sustained with regular contributions will save lives of vulnerable children and serve as a relief to poor parents.