The Eastern Regional Hospital in Koforidua, ERHK, needs new vehicles to help day-to-day administrative activities to help improve quality healthcare.
Currently, almost all vehicles at the hospital are old and some becoming rickety.
The last time the hospital received vehicles from the Ministry of health is about seven years ago.
This website has gathered that staff of the hospital mostly uses their private vehicles to carry out activities for the hospital and used same to attend conferences, workshops, emergency meetings among others even outside the region on behalf of the hospital.
The Medical Director at ERHK, Dr. Arko Akoto Ampaw agreed that “our vehicles are also very old and the newest vehicle of probably more than seven years old which must be decommissioned by the high use of an institution like this”.
He, therefore, appealed for new vehicles for the various departments of the hospital to enable them to function to maximum expectation.
The Eastern Regional Hospital was established 95 years ago initially as a municipal Hospital to serve New Juaben but was upgraded in the ’70s to Regional Hospital status with few infrastructural expansions.
“Overall this hospital we will say a very old hospital, 95 years old and still counting but our structures are highly maintained. The challenge of maintaining old structures is the cost involved, and that is how come most areas once the thing is as old as what it has to be they decommission to commission a new one” Dr. Akoto Ampaw said.
He is hopeful the completion of the new Eastern Regional Hospital would end the challenges facing the current facility.
The Eastern Regional Hospital is a referral facility in the region .Out patients Department Attendance (OPD) rose from 232,485 in 2020 to 264,640 in 2021 representing 13.8% increase. Admissions rose from 21,396 in 2020 to 24,713 in 2021.
According to Dr. Akoto Ampaw “, the hospital saw an increase in the use of the facility and then we were able to reduce our overall mortality in different field especially maternal mortality and also child mortality, neonatal mortality.
We also saw that the top causes of mortalities remain lifestyle diseases so the stroke, diabetes, hypertension are still very high on the agenda and then also a few communicable diseases like HIV still featured in there”.
Source: Mybrytnewsroom.com/Obed Ansah
