Ho, Sept. 22, GNA – Patients are stranded at the Ho Teaching Hospital due to the strike action by the nurses, midwives, and other health workers.
Apart from cases relating to the dressing of medical surgeries, the other departments, including the out-patient department are not functioning.
Doctors are, however, rendering services at the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) to attend to premature newborn babies at the time of Ghana News Agency’s (GNA) visit.
Ghana Registered Nurse and Midwives Association (GRNMA), Ghana Physicians Assistants Association (GPAA), and the Ghana Association of Registered Anaesthetists (GARA) embarked on strike from Monday due to disagreements over conditions of service, among others.
Scores of patients have expressed disappointment over the strike action.
Mr Kojo Dezor said any death resulting from the strike must be punishable.
“When the demands of the striking officials are met would that bring back the dead,” he asked.
One patient asked that government should deduct from the salaries of the officials the number of days they absented themselves from work, claiming their action is inhumane.
Kofi Agbenyo, a patient, said he thought nurses were considered as frontline workers in the fight against COVID-19 and being paid for risking their lives to save patients afflicted by the virus.
He expected the striking officials to give the government time and to meet over the issues in a dialogue than the draconian measures being adopted, saying the timing for the strike was sheer wickedness.
Meanwhile, Mr Moses Robertson Anyigbah, Volta Regional Chairman of GRNMA, told the GNA that their proposals failed to catch the attention of government hence the call for the strike action.
He said the group was ready to dialogue with the government when invited.
“We are willing to go back to the negotiating table and will not want to pull excessively on the moral dilemmas of the strike action.”
On timing, he said the negotiations started long before the COVID-19 pandemic.
He expressed gratitude to the government for the inclusion of nurses as frontline beneficiaries of its package for high-risk workers for the containment of the virus.
Mr Anyigbah said, “We do not intend to use our position to jeopardize government efforts and the lives of our patients. Regrettably, we are here.”
GNA