The outbreak of Covid-19 seems to have affected Out Patient Department services at the Eastern Regional Hospital in Koforidua.
Management of the Hospital has indefinitely suspended all non-emergency surgeries due to coronavirus outbreak in the Country.
Management says it will attend to only emergency surgeries.
A statement issued by the Hospital and signed by the Acting Medical Director, Dr. Cardinal Newton stated that the move is “as part of measures to contain the spread of the coronavirus (Covid-19) “
Many patients are therefore complaining of not being given the needed attention when one attends the facility.
In 2019, the Hospital saw a general increase in all attendances. Whereas OPD attendance increased by 28,426 that is from 237,870 in 2018 to 266,296 in 2019, In-patient increased by 433 from 21,014 in 2018 to 21,447 in 2019.
Similarly, average daily OPD attendance rose from 826 in 2018 to 927 in 2019 with a corresponding increase in average daily admissions from 58 in 2018 to 59 in 2019.
The above statistics give trajectory of the high OPD attendances and how the current trend of care as a result of the coronavirus scourge is affecting patients who ordinarily need healthcare.
Below is a harrowing account of a patient
“I don’t think that people will willingly be visiting health facilities to report their conditions or to know their status as far as this C – 19 pandemic is a concern if they go through what I went through at the Koforidua Central Hospital. I wasn’t feeling too well yesterday and around 8pm, I started vomiting especially when I took in ice water. I rushed to the Koforidua Central Hospital and guess what.
There wasn’t any doctor or a nurse to talk to at the OPD so a record staff asked me to go to the triage for care. I entered and was asked to sit down for my vitals checked. Sitting there for more than 45 minutes later, a male nurse and a doctor asked what was wrong with me and I said it. The doctor not altering a word took his bag and left.
The nurse after some minutes approached me again and said “triage” is an emergency unit so he will wish I go home because they had a lot of emergency cases to attend to and advised I come early morning the next day so they take care of me. Looking at how they were behaving, I had to go home unattended to and even without my vitals checked. Assuming I am a carrier of COVID – 19, what would have happened? This morning at about 6:30, I reported at the facility.
Again, no doctor or nurse at the OPD so as usual, I went to the triage. For about one whole hour in the room, I wasn’t taken care of. Now, they say I should go out and wait for the OPD doctors. Yoooo. It is past 9 O’clock and still waiting for OPD doctors who have not dreamt of coming to work. It is unfortunate. When a doctor came at 9:30 and my vitals checked, my BP was 157/92. You see, I was dying slowly. I am not a BP patient oooo.
Health workers especially, those in the public sector should not think that people just love going to the hospitals if there is nothing wrong with them oooo. With this practice how will people voluntarily report at health facilities if they are not well? #Godsaveghana#.”
Source: Mybrytfmonline/Obed Ansah
