Members of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Health were yesterday exposed to the appalling conditions at the Obstetrician and Gynaecology Department of the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) under which doctors and nurses deliver pregnant mothers.
The department which originally had 170 beds now takes 450 patients with most of them sleeping on the bare floor. Doctors have to bend down to take care of them.
To the amazement of the parliamentary team and the media that went round, bathrooms which were adjacent to toilets have been turned to rooms for screening new borns, a situation which the doctors said was not good for the health of health professionals, babies and their mothers.
This is where it was alleged that a stillborn baby got missing culminating in attcaks on the hospital staff by sympathisers of the mother of the dead baby. The place is so congested that some nursing mothers who have been operated on are kept at the theatre recovery beds till they are discharged.
The Select Committee led by Mr Yeileh Chireh, was at the hospital as part of their usual visits to health institutions and also find at first hand the version of the hospital authority’s about recent happenings, especially the loss of the body of a stillborn.
Briefing the committee, Prof H. S. Opare Addo said after the recent violent attacks on the staff, especially nurses and doctors, a group of people from the same area rushed to the department demanding the body of the dead baby.
He explained that for fear of losing the baby and be subjected to another bout of insults, assaults and threat of losing their job as well as verbal attacks from some people in authority, they nurses “packaged” the body and hid it in their dressing room.
He added that all these had come about because the wards were so congested that there was no place to put such dead babies other than place them close to the dust bins.
Prof Opare-Addo presented a copy of a petition doctors, nurses, and consultants at the Obstetrician and Gynaecology Department of KATH had written regarding the need to decongest the department.
The letter which was addressed to the board of the hospital and copied to the Ministry of Health called on the government to complete the seven story Mother and Baby Unit started 38 years ago.
It expressed the hope that the building would be completed by the end of this year.
Responding, Mr Chireh commended the doctors and nurses for working under such conditions and pleaded not to pay heed to those who out of ignorance insulted and castigated doctors and nurses at the department.
He noted that Ghanaians must sympathise with doctors and nurses at the department instead of heaping insults on them at the least opportunity.
