Recalling a traumatic experience and agonies she went through in one of the premier hospitals in Accra just before she gave birth, a 33-year old lady and graphic designer said proper care and support from health personnel were virtually missing during that period.
Sharing her agony with Daily Graphic in an interview, she said “it was only by divine intervention that I successfully delivered my third baby and stayed alive.
I arrived at the hospital at 5:15 a.m. on December 30, 2013 in severe pains, and was asked to sit on a bench to wait for my turn and it was two hours later that I finally saw the doctor, who wrote something on my folder, gave it to the nurse in charge to take care of me and left the room immediately.”
Scan
“Moments afterwards, the nurse, together with her colleagues in the consulting room, also left me to attend a meeting without telling me anything. later I learnt that the meeting was meant to provide some items for their Christmas celebrations,” she recalled. She said one of the nurses returned around 11 a.m., while she was still in pain and, after examining her folder, indicated that the doctor had instructed her to go for a scan at Osu before she would be attended to.
“That further aggravated the agony I was going through, so I informed her that I could not walk to Osu for a scan , but that infuriated her the more. She ignored me and sat down until I had dilated 4.5 centimetres, ” she bemoaned. The mother of three explained that many other terrible incidents occurred before she was able to deliver safely.
This situation has been described by the General Manager of The Trust Hospital (TTH) in Accra, Dr Darius Kofi Osei, as unprofessional in health care. “People in labour or those who are sick are always traumatised, and therefore need to be offered the best of attention at the hospitals to speed up their delivery and recovery,” he reacted.
Positive attitude
“The time has come for healthcare professionals to make quality care their prime focus to boost the confidence of patients. This will induce them to flock to hospitals to source our services. Without that patients will always resort to self-medication or rush to quack doctors for their services, thereby undermining our quest for controlling maternal and infant mortality in the country,” he advised.
He said “the attitude of healthcare professionals is key to quality health care because even in the dying state, patients would like to avoid health care professionals who have attitudinal challenges. This is because patients always want to be assured of the best treatment, so the attitude of health professionals play a vital role in health care”.
Care and ethics
On what the TTH was doing for women in labour to reduce the incidence of maternal mortalities in Ghana, Dr Osei said keen monitoring and supervision of staff enable them to provide the best of services to patients.
“We have not recorded any maternal and infant mortality over the last two years because of good care and applying the ethics of the profession,” he noted.
Statistics
Giving statistics to support his claim, he said between 2010 and 2013, a total of 3,075 women were safely delivered of babies at the TTH. Explaining, he said “in 2010 we recorded a total of 745 deliveries and the number increased to 817 the following year. In 2012, the TTH recorded a total of 751 deliveries, and last year, the number of safe deliveries shot up to 762, and during the periods, only two deaths were recorded,” he recalled.
Dr Osei said childbearing “is a trump card for marriage to be sustained in Ghana, so it is important for medical officers to give premium to their patients to ensure that both the mother and baby survive, hence the need to build the capacity of our doctors and midwives more meaningfully to enable them to offer the best of care to our mothers.”
Facilities
Dr Osei said another way to facilitate the prevention of mother and child death during labour was to ensure quality and efficient logistics and facilities, adding that obsolete machines in some hospitals also contributed to the rate of mortality in the country.
Pre-natal counselling and exercises
“We do not only offer pre-natal counselling to patients but encourage them as well to undertake series of exercises to keep them healthy throughout their pregnancy. This is a key component towards safe delivery because both the mother and baby maintain good health, even after delivery, thereby reducing maternal and infant mortalities.
Monitoring of labour and delivery is another area necessary to curb maternal and infant mortalities in the country because in spite of being in good condition prior to delivery, there could be some complications during delivery. That is why it is important to monitor patients during labour to ensure safe delivery and good health of both mother and baby,” he noted.
Post–natal counselling
According to Dr Osei, post-natal care and counselling to patients are another service medical officers should consider as priority, explaining that even after a few weeks of delivery some complications can occur, hence the need to continue providing health care to patients to detect all forms of abnormalities in both mothers and their babies and treat them as early as possible
When contacted, the President of the Ghana Medical Association (GMA), Dr Kwabena Opoku-Adusei, acknowledged that customer care was part of the challenges confronting health professionals but said it was not limited to health professionals and workers alone. He said there were also varied socio-cultural and economic causes, as well as other indirect determinants, of maternal deaths.
Lack of personnel
Explaining, he said inadequate number of health professionals in the country had been identified as one major factor that undermined quality health care, saying “Ghana has less than half the World Health Organisation (WHO) recommended number of doctors and nurses and the number of midwives is also pitiful,”
According to Dr Opoku -Adusei, lack of personnel, poor remuneration and insufficient number of hospitals in the country were other contributory factors that affected quality health care for women in labour.
