New facilities for St Martin de Porres Hospital
The Deputy Director of Administration of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), Mr Micah Asare Bediako, has advised communities to participate meaningfully in the realisation of the Community–based Health Planning Service (CHPS) concept.
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“The role of the community is to provide a CHPS compound, assist in its management and participate in the planning, organisation and delivery of health services,” he stressed.
Mr Bediako gave the advice at the opening of a new administration block and a mortuary at the St Martin de Porres Hospital at Agomanya in the Lower Manya Krobo Municipality in the Eastern Region.
The hospital is a Catholic Mission hospital started by Bishop Joseph Oliver Bowers, SVD (Society of the Divine Word) in 1946.
Neonatal
Mr Bediako said neonatal deaths had become an important component of under-five deaths, accounting for about 40 per cent of under-five deaths in Ghana.
He said in 2014, for instance, it was reported that about 90 per cent of newborn deaths occurred at home because of various factors, including socio-cultural beliefs and practices.
He emphasised that two–thirds of those deaths could be prevented if mothers and newborns received known cost–effective interventions such as a strategy that promoted universal access to antenatal care, skilled birth attendants and early post-natal care which in no mean way contributed to a sustained reduction in maternal and neonatal mortality.
That notwithstanding, Mr Bediako said, Ghana was well focused and committed to its policy of ensuring that every newborn survived and grew to full adulthood and contributed to national development.
He advised stakeholders to fulfil their mandates and contribute their quota towards the achievement of health-related Millennium Development Goals 4 and 5 (MDG 4&5)
Koforidua Diocese
The Executive Secretary of the Catholic Diocesan Health Service in Koforidua, Mr Victus Kwaku Kpesese, who represented the Bishop of the Koforidua Diocese of the Catholic Church, the Most Rev Joseph Agyekum Afrifa, noted that the effectiveness and efficiency of the out-patients department (OPD) would affect overall cost of treatment to the patient and the facility.
He said life expectancies were increasing, with increasing chronic diseases, in addition to communicable ones.
That trend, he said, would call for long-term care facilities to care for the aged.
He asked medical doctors, nurses and other paramedics to be models of humility, respect, empathy and, more importantly, show professionalism with team spirit towards the sick.
Hospital administrator
The Hospital Administrator, Mr Owusu Bempah, in his welcome address, said infrastructural facilities posed a big challenge to healthcare delivery there, hence the need for management to re-equip the hospital in order to justify its existence.
He said the new administration block was meant to provide a centralised location where administrative business could be conducted by persons who came to transact various businesses with the hospital to reduce loitering and time wasting.
On the mortuary, he said the current one had been taking excess load over a long period, hence the need to provide additional quality facility that would take 162 bodies to ease pressure on the existing mortuary.
