TACKLE HEALTH EXPANSION PROJECTS ONE BY ONE (THURSDAY, FEB 28, PAGE 25)

STORY: Moses Dotsey Aklorbortu, Takoradi

With the introduction of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), various health facilities in the country have seen a steady increase in out-patient department (OPD) attendance which provide services under the scheme.
But there has not been a correspondent increase in health infrastructure and personnel to match the teeming numbers who seek medical care at the facilities.
The NHIS has, indeed, given hope to those who previously relied solely on herbal preparations to treat their ailments.
It is an undisputed fact that the provision of health infrastructure requires a huge capital outlay especially when the internally generated revenue of the hospitals is nothing to write home about.
That is why the release of funds to facilities that provide health care should be regular and prompt.
Interestingly, the flow of funds from the National Health Insurance Council (NHIC) to the service providers is not the best and it is creating a lot of problems for the service providers.
It is the duty of the district assemblies to support the health facilities in their expansion of infrastructure but they are also faced with demands from other sectors including education, which they must fulfil.
What is worrying, however, is that the management of some hospitals plan to undertake expansion programmes without ensuring that there is enough funding to complete the projects on schedule. A typical example of this anomaly can be found in the twin-city of Sekondi/Takoradi. Currently there are two ongoing hospital expansion projects that are yet to be completed.
These are the Accident and Emergency Unit of the Effia-Nkwanta and European hospitals.
What is basically delaying the completion of the two projects can be traced to the lack of funds. But one wonders why the Shama Ahanta East Assembly (SAEMA) initiated the expansion projects when they knew that funds were not available.
Why should the hospitals commit hard-earned resources on projects they cannot complete when other areas are left unattended to?
Considering the proximity of the Effia-Nkwanta and European hospitals in Sekondi-Takoradi the initiators of the projects should have tackled the expansion projects one after another instead of starting the two at a time and abandoning them halfway.
The exact time expansion work started on the Effia-Nkwanta hospital is not known but from the records, that of the European Hospital was started in 2004 and work at the site was abandoned in 2005 due to lack of funds.
Many a resident in the twin-city are worried at what is happening and would have wished that the authorities had committed the funds for two casualty units to one and completed before moving on to the second project.
The casualty unit of the European hospital does not have an ambulance and ambulance bay, and there are countless problems at the delivery wards and theatres. Even though the expansion work at the casualty unit was important it would have done a lot of good if the money invested in the uncompleted project had been spent in solving the urgent needs of the hospital.