Health centre for 237 communities to shut down
The management of the King’s Village Medical Centre at Bontanga in the Kumbungu District has threatened to close down the only health facility in the area due to the delay by the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) in paying claims due the centre.
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The centre, which currently attends to only emergency and in-patients, is the only health facility in the area and caters for more than 237 communities in the Kumbungu and the Tolon districts.
“We are resorting to these measures because we have been pushed to the wall, as we have exhausted all our finances,” the administrator of the centre, Nii Otu Ankrah, said.
He said due to the centre’s huge indebtedness to its drug suppliers, they had refused to deliver supplies, adding, “We have not even been able to pay our salaries as I speak to you now.”
Nii Otu said the NHIS currently owed the centre about GH¢640,000, explaining that the last time it was paid any claim was May 2013, when it received 25 per cent of the outstanding amount.
He said the last claim was presented in November last year and had not been honoured.
Nii Otu described the situation as serious and cautioned that if measures were not taken to arrest the problem, it could pose a major setback to the health of the people.
“The people are so deprived that they cannot afford to pay for the health services we provide here. As much as we help them as a church organisation, we also need the necessary resources to operate successfully,” he stated.
When contacted, the Northern Regional Manager of the NHIS, Alhaji Huudu Iddrisu, expressed concern over the situation and attributed it to an administrative “oversight” which he said had since been corrected.
“As I speak to you now, some claims for last year were paid last week. And this week claims for June and July will be cleared,” he said.
The King's Village Project, as it is called, was established by Rev. Ben Owusu-Sekyere and his wife, Rev. Marion Owusu-Sekyere, in 2003, with support from the Christian Centre of the Assemblies of God Church based in Nottingham in the UK as a charity organisation.
