Patients who travelled from far and near to seek medical attention at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) in Kumasi were turned away with a directive that they should return next week for healthcare, reports Richard Owusu-Akyaw.
Staff of the hospital who had collected the Patients’ Personal Reference Cards, cards used to trace the folders of patients, gave it back to them after they wrote a new appointment date for the disappointed patients.
A staff of the facility was overheard telling an old man, Opanin Kwadwo Opoku: “Come for your card and come back next week.”
The Chronicle observed during a visit to the facility that social distance was being observed by the patients, as the ever-busy Out Patient Department was sparsely populated.
One of the patients, who gave his name as Akwasi Frimpong, told The Chronicle: “They say we should go home, no doctor is available, but they took our cards and entered details of our folder onto a computer and directed us to go home and come back next week for treatment.”
Akwasi Frimpong, a native of Adum Kwanwoma in the Atwima Kwanwoma District of the Ashanti Region, described the development at KATH as unfortunate, arguing that President Akufo-Addo had taken good care of health workers in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.
He noted that the President increased their salaries but they are still disturbing patients. “There we go, look, they are giving the card back to patients, is this nice? He queried.
A patient, who also spoke to this paper on condition of anonymity, said they had been told that the doctors did not come and that they were having a meeting, “so we should go home and come to hospital next week.”
The worried woman continued that they do not have medicine to keep them healthy, so they are keeping faith in God that something evil will not crop up as they go home.
“We are appealing to the government to be merciful to us, because when you are seriously sick and report to hospital, there is no doctor to attend to you. You will roam about the entire hospital, which has seen a lot of patients dying on the premises of hospitals.
“When you query them about their slow pace, they respond that they are living in fear owing to the spate at which people are getting sick. We are pleading with the government to do something about this strike to enable some of us who are off colour to have access to doctors, failure to do this could lead to deaths.”
Speaking to another man on condition of anonymity, he told this paper that he lives at Asankragua in the Western Region and brought his ailing son to hospital, but they had been turned away.
In an interaction with Mr. Kwame Frimpong, Public Relations Officer of KATH, he told The Chronicle that the hospital had put in place measures to handle emergency cases.
Samuel Agbewode also reports from Ho that the nurse’s strike at the government health facilities in the Volta Region, which entered day three yesterday, did not result into deaths, but rather put pressure on the few existing private hospitals.
The major government hospitals in the capital, Ho, looked like a cemetery when this reporter visited the facilities yesterday, as no nurse or patients were seen. The Administrator at the Ho Municipal Hospital, Mr. Samuel Omegah, however, said no death had been recorded in the past two days.
However, the Administrator at the Royal Hospital in Ho, a private health facility, Mr. Saviour Amakpa, disclosed that the strike embarked upon by nurses at the various government facilities within the past two days had put much pressure on his staff, as they keep on receiving referrals from the government hospitals.
Mr. Amakpa further explained that over the past two days, Royal Hospital had attended to 200 patients across the region, against their usual attendance of between twenty and thirty patients a day.
The Royal Hospital Administrator said the number of patients at the hospital on admission was more than the capacity of the facility, and that they had provided an additional 40 beds to cater for patients brought from Kpando, Hohoe, Worawora and Dambai.
He also disclosed that 20 deliveries were performed within the two days of the strike, stressing that patients on admission before the strike were also brought to the hospital from the Ho Municipal Hospital, the Teaching Hospital, and other government health faculties.
Mr. Amakpa said staff of the hospital particularly nurses have to spend twelve hours instead of the normal six hours and that four surgical operations were conducted in a day since the government nurses embarked on the strike.
Kwesi Alfred Adams also reports from Takoradi that the strike action has seriously affected patients on admission. Nurses deserted the wards and the local task force set up by their leadership made sure they did not return to work.
A report from Wassa Akropong Government Hospital indicates that patients on admission were discharged by doctors because there were no nurses to take care of them.
A serving nurse at the hospital confirmed to this reporter that apart from the maternity wards, those on admission had all been discharged.
In Sekondi-Takoradi, nurses continue to desert the wards, leaving only doctors and pharmacists at the mercy of patients who visit the hospital.
At the Takoradi Hospital, the place was empty with no sight of nurses. The wards had been deserted with red bands hanging on the walls, indicating the nurses were on strike. At the Effia-Nkwanta Regional Hospital, the story was the same.
A radio broadcaster who recounted the ordeal he went through when his relative was on admission at the hospital said: “This is not a time to die.”
His reason is that he had to struggle to have a relative who had passed on eventually put in the morgue, after the nurses turned down duty of having his relative processed for the morgue.
“The nurses failed to fill a form to put my relative in the morgue, with the explanation that they are on strike.”
The post How the nurses’ strike was felt in the regions appeared first on The Chronicle Online.
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