Women in labour, men, children share same ward

A Senior Physician Assistant for Sefwi Asawinso in the Wiaso District of the Western North Region, Mr Felix Annin, is appealing to President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and the Ministry of Health, as a matter of urgency, to complete the abandoned Community-based Health Planning and Services (CHPS) compound to aid healthcare delivery in the area.

According to Mr Annin, the current Health Centre catering for more than 30,000 residents is housed on a rented self-contained apartment whose rent will expire come April 2020.

He said because of the small nature of the two-room facility with a porch, there is no proper ventilation for patients while male, female, children and maternity wards are together a single room having only three beds.

Congestion

“Because the place is small and congested, the rooms are always hot with no toilet facility nor water source to administer healthcare. We have to sometimes hire people to fetch water for us for a fee before we can do any work,” he said.

Mr Annin said “on a hot working day, the facility can attend to over 50 patients and during such situations, we have to administer people on benches while some patients have to take turns for the beds.”

He said the facility which was established in 2011 is in dire need of a new place because the centre is a threat to health delivery in the district.

Residents react

According to some residents, it’s difficult to access good healthcare due to the deplorable nature of the CHPS compound and bad roads leading to where the health center is situated.

Some of the nurses who spoke to the paper on condition of anonymity revealed that the community has a new clinic which is near completion but has been abandoned for the past 12 years.

Queen of the area

The Queen of Sefwi Asawinso, Nana Ama Kyinyie II, has revealed that her town will boycott any political activity if the government fails to complete the abandoned CHPS compound project to support good health delivery in the district.

She said immediately President Akufo-Addo came to power, the contractor quickly mobilised and came to the site and they thought“this time everything will be completed but for some years now nothing has been done.”Nana Kyinyie said if they failed to adhere to our request, “we will not vote in the 2020 general election.”

She said the Sefwi Asawinso town lacked potable water and street lights to ward off criminals, and that the market had no lights while the construction of the road network in the township still remained a primary objective to the chief and opinion leaders.

“My people are really suffering, the CHPS compound here is serving more than seven communities yet its state is nothing to write home about. We have been calling on the assembly to help us but to no avail,” the Queen lamented.