Come To The Rescue Of Korle-Bu

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Created on Monday, 27 June 2011 00:00

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Come To The Rescue Of Korle-Bu

The Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital is the largest health facility and premier teaching hospital in the country.

It is the nerve centre of healthcare services and provides tertiary health care and facilities for educating and training health professionals, conducts or collaborates with similar institutions to undertake research work and provides outreach services for all categories of people in the country.

But, in recent times, Korle-Bu has been bedevilled with many problems concerning the acquisition of modern equipment for its smooth and effective operations.

In October last year, according to a research by the Wisewater Foundation, Korle-Bu’s water storage facility could only sustain the hospital for a day, a situation which hampered its operations.

In February this year, it came out that the Urology Department was without the requisite facilities and modern theatres and that seriously affected its capacity to deliver, for which reason it was only able to perform one major surgery and a minor one every week, although the hospital attends to between 800 and 1,200 outpatients daily.

Surgical operations at Korle-Bu came to a halt in the latter part of May this year following the breakdown of equipment at its Anaesthesia Department.

As if these are not enough, it has come out that the Reconstructive Plastic Surgery and Burns Centre of the hospital, which draws a sizeable number of patients from neighbouring countries such as Nigeria, Burkina Faso and Togo, is in dire need of an intensive care unit of international standards for the management of first degree burns and complex cases (see front page).

It is said that in 2010 alone, Out-Patient Department (OPD) attendance at the centre stood at 1,473, with a steady rise in the number of OPD attendance since its establishment in 1997, with the exception of 2000, 2006 and 2007 which experienced some dip.

According to the Director of the centre, Mr Opoku Ware Ampomah, in view of the growing number of patients, both within and outside the country, the absence of an ICU affected its ability to administer proper treatment to patients under emergency.

We also believe that in view of the emerging oil and gas industry in Ghana, with it is inevitable explosions and fire outbreaks, the Plastic Surgery and Burns Centre needs an ICU with modern equipment to cater for emergency cases.

The Reconstructive Plastic Surgery and Burns Centre, the National Cardiothoracic Centre and the Centre for Radiotherapy and Nuclear Medicine at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital are very important institutions that should be supported to grow to provide good and efficacious health care for our people.

The vision of the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital is to achieve an enviable, world-acclaimed reputation as a first-class teaching hospital, with innovation in specialist health care education and training and research and as such we believe it needs all the support it can get to achieve that vision.

Everything possible should be done to establish an ICU at the Reconstructive Plastic Surgery and Burns Centre, so that patients with first degree burns will not be sent outside for treatment at a heavy cost to the state.

Source: The Daily Graphic/Ghana