By Godfred Aaneamenga Polkuu
Bolgatanga, Sept. 11, GNA – Dr Joseph Kojo Tambil, the Medical Director of the Upper East Regional Hospital in Bolgatanga, has appealed to the Ministry of Health to address severe staffing and funding constraints in the facility.
He said the challenge undermined the hospital’s ability to provide quality specialist care, support postgraduate medical training, and indicated that its staffing situation was particularly critical as the complexity of cases it handled continued to increase.
Dr Tambil made the appeal when Mr Kwabena Mintah Akandoh, the Minister for Health, visited the hospital to interact with management and doctors as part of his monitoring of the rollout of the Free Primary Health Care programme in the region.
The Medical Director recounted an incident involving the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), where staff shortages made it difficult to admit an additional patient who required critical care.
“There was only one staff at the ICU at that moment. So to add an additional patient means that we are going to lower the level of care for the patient in the ICU,” he said.
He emphasized the need for staffing allocations to take into account the complexity of cases, and the level of care provided at regional hospitals rather than relying mainly on patient attendance figures.
Dr Tambil cited the demands of complex surgical cases, noting that some patients could remain in theatre for extended periods and required several health professionals to provide continuous care.
“We are pleading that the regional hospitals should not be treated as large district hospitals. The level of complexity is different,” the Medical Director said.
He further noted that funding for postgraduate training was another concern, and told the Minister that the hospital needed resources to facilitate visiting specialists who travelled from Kumasi and Tamale to perform procedures and train residents.
According to Dr Tambil, inadequate revenue was partly linked to what he considered low National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) tariffs for regional hospitals, and said the situation was compounded by the payment of primary-level tariffs in cases where patients did not have referral letters from lower-level facilities.
“The secondary tariffs have been slashed. We are being paid primary tariffs,” he said.
Dr Tambil, therefore, urged the Minister, who is the Member of Parliament for the Juaboso Constituency in the Western North Region to review the tariff arrangements to ensure regional facilities had adequate resources to meet their operational and specialist-care obligations.
He further appealed for government action on the fourth phase of the hospital’s redevelopment project, which was intended to transform it into a proper tertiary-level facility.
He said the project was captured in the 2025 and 2026 budgets, but physical construction was yet to begin, “We are supposed to have a phase four of the redevelopment project. And the aim of that is to get us to the level of a proper tertiary facility. But the pickaxe has not hit the ground yet,” he said.
He urged the Minister to help accelerate the implementation of the project, as the expansion would be critical to improving specialist healthcare delivery and postgraduate training in the region.
The appeal comes as the hospital simultaneously works to expand postgraduate training, improve diagnostic services and attract specialist support from other parts of the country.
Dr Tambil expressed appreciation to the Ministry of Health and the Ghana Health Service for prioritizing the facility, while stressing that additional support would be needed to translate its growing responsibilities into sustainable specialist healthcare services.
Following the Medical Director’s appeal, the Ghana News Agency (GNA) undertook a two-day observation visit to the hospital to assess the staffing situation.
The GNA gathered that the staffing challenge significantly affected the nursing unit, with most critical units operating with a skeletal number of nurses and midwives.
The hospital has a total of 236 Registered General Nurses (RGNs), 107 Enrolled Nurses (ENs), nine Community Health Nurses, and 116 midwives managing the 265-bed-capacity referral hospital serving the entire region, parts of the North East and Upper West Regions and neighbouring Burkina Faso.
Of the 236 RGNs, nine are Deputy Chief Nursing and Midwifery Officers, while one is a Chief Nursing Officer. The number also includes specialist nurses who manage 28 nursing departments.
A total of 37 of the RGNs were away on training, while eight of the ENs and four of the midwives were also in school.
The GNA observed a worrying situation, with some wards being managed by skeletal staff, while attending to an overwhelming number of patients.
At the Accident and Emergency Unit, for instance, the GNA observed that only three nurses were on duty for the morning shift on Friday, September 11, 2026, managing a unit that was full to capacity, with assistance from some National Service Persons, while several patients, including some who were lying on the floor, waited for the same nurses to attend to them.
The highest number of nursing staff observed on duty on the wards visited was four, which also reflected on the duty rosters posted on the respective notice boards of the Paediatric Medical Ward, Maternity Unit, Theatre, Intensive Care Unit (ICU), and other critical units.
GNA
Edited by Caesar Abagali/Kenneth Odeng Adade