Gov’t To Address Under-Staffing At Accra Regional Hospital

Dr. Anthony Nsiah-Asare, Director-General of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), has promised to address the under-staffing situation at the Greater Accra Regional Hospital by employing more health professionals.

He said due to inadequate number of doctors, nurses and specialists, the Intensive Care Unit of the hospital was not fully operational.

Dr Nsiah-Asare made this known during a working visit to various units of the Hospital in Accra on Friday.

He expressed gratitude to Management for maintaining a clean environment and also for their effort to address some general challenges facing the hospital.

Speaking on some of the challenges, he noted that there were limited number of staff such as nurses, specialists, pharmacists and doctors.

He said since most of the health conditions were not covered by the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), the GHS would try to factor some cost in their annual budget to ensure the hospital was financially viable and continue giving quality care.

“Ridge Hospital has the best Intensive Care Unit (ICU) in the country with 36 beds; therefore, we should have intensive care doctors and nurses to ensure that the unit operates effectively,” he said.

“We would engage the Regional Director of the GHS to provide nurses to support the seven Intensive care nurses currently on the field.

“Since the hospital is still under a year warranty, we want to test all the machines so that any defect identified are fixed by the contractors,” he continued.

The GHS boss assured the public that the Greater Accra Regional Hospital’s ICU would start operating fully on January 15.

“I will make use of the human resources and student nurses who pass through the hospital to enable them to use these machines before they start working”.

He also assured the public that the GHS would integrate mental health into the health system in order to reduce the stigmatization of people with mental health problems.

Source: The Publisher Newspaper