ACCRA — The Korle Bu Teaching Hospital has informed its patients, peer hospitals in the country and the general public that it will suspend three surgical clinics until further notice from Monday February 8, 2016.
The Public relations Officer of Korle Bu, Mustapha Salifu, writes that the closing of the Urology Clinic, General Surgery Clinic and Neurosurgery Clinic are all in the spirit of allowing for work to be done in the theaters and recovery wards, all at the Department of Surgery to improve quality of care.
Mind you the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital is the premier health care facility in Ghana. It is the only tertiary hospital in the southern part of Ghana. It is a teaching hospital affiliated with the medical school of the University of Ghana and it’s an important part of the national healthcare system. Its three centers of excellence, the National Cardiothoracic Center, the National Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery and the Radiotherapy Centers are well-funded by the taxpayer as is the rest of the hospital.
For this reason, I must aver that Mr. Mustapha Salifu’s words are churlish, if not wholly callous.
As a result of his irresponsibility — shadowed only by the equal concupiscent irresponsibility of the leaders of Korle Bu, and in fact the leaders of the country — even emergency cases will only be considered on a case by case basis, if at all, at Korle Bu. All cases must however be referred to other hospitals.
This means that all elective cases – non-emergency cases – in Urology, General Surgery and Neurosurgery would be referred to other hospitals within Accra and the surrounding metropolis.
But, the call to repair and revamp the clinics at Korle Bu can only be understood if the success rates in these surgical clinics are fully examined. Korle Bu continues to lag behind its peers in East Africa, such as Rwanda. In fact the notoriety of the hospital as a graveyard continues to persist in the minds of many in Ghana and in West Africa.
Many well-meaning medical practitioners including the likes of Grace Ayensu Danquah have deplored the decision. More, they condemn the IQ of the officials of the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital who have turned the country’s healthcare system into an unseemly cemetery by shutting down all three operating theaters at the same time.
Why shut down all surgery clinics?
There are more pragmatic ways to go about renovations – installing new equipment and repairing old ones – such that patients are not found wanting for their much needed medical help. For example, a Cascading Sequestration Strategy could have been employed since February 5, 2015 when the notice to shut down the hospital was formulated.
What would such a plan entail? Close down the General Surgery Clinic and use the Urology Clinic operating theaters for all surgeries and consultations. Once the work on the General Surgery Theater is complete, it can be opened to all surgical cases while closing down another clinic for urgent repairs. And so on. Korle Bu has had more than a year to implement such a plan.
In addition, the simple reason such a plan would work is obvious. All theaters of surgery have some of the same basic equipment. These can be used for multiple surgical purposes – or retrofitted to compensate for unique procedures. A Cascading Sequestration Strategy for renovations would be in the interest of the good people of Ghana and the patients who need urgent care.
But, since Korle Bu and the country at large lack serious leadership, Ghanaian patients, and in fact patients from other countries in West Africa must be absorbed into other much smaller hospitals which can only boast of less than half of the facilities at Korle Bu. Where should all these patients go for medical help?
At the end of the day the medical havoc of this unbridled decision on the already shaky medieval healthcare system that Ghana has hewn from its colonial past will be irremediable.
