By Anthony Adongo Apubeo
Navrongo (U/E), Sept 28, GNA-The War Memorial Hospital in the Kassena-Nankana Municipality of the Upper East Region is in dire need of an autoclave to ensure effective infection control and prevention, to achieve quality healthcare.
The District Hospital, which is a major referral facility in the Municipality and other adjoining districts, has only one autoclave which has become obsolete, posing threat to efforts to deal with emergency cases.
Management of the Hospital told the Ghana News Agency in Navrongo, that the old autoclave could no longer perform quality sterilisation and needed to be replaced.
It, therefore, appealed to the government, Non-Governmental Organisations, institutions, and individuals to assist the hospital with an autoclave to deliver quality healthcare to clients.
An Autoclave is a machine used before surgical procedures to perform sterilisation to kill harmful bacteria, viruses, fungi and spores on items to be used for surgical operations.
Dr Eric Wedam, the Medical Superintendent of the Hospital, said during multiple cases of deliveries and surgeries, health staff were always compelled to use other alternative means of sterilisation which was not the best.
“Currently, we have a special need for an autoclave, it is a machine which is used to sterilise instruments to make sure that we do clean surgeries.
So, if you have an autoclave which is not working well, it means the level at which you sterilise your instruments may be doubtful because the one we have currently is old and will need to be replaced,” he lamented.
The Medical Superintendent expressed the fear that the lives of patients particularly pregnant women and people who needed surgeries could be at risk should the current autoclave break down.
“The issue is that what we have is obsolete and once it breaks down operations have to stop, so you can imagine where you need to take care of a woman who is struggling to deliver and no woman is allowed to die at childbirth and the issue you have to deal with is that you could not sterilise your instruments because you do not have the machine,” he lamented.
He said the hospital needed at least two autoclaves, “so that when one breaks down the other one takes over but, in this case, we have only one which is too old.”
The Medical Superintendent said management had been able to acquire Blood Pressure checking equipment but was still struggling to pay, adding “the autoclave is so much more expensive, and we cannot actually get someone to give it to us and we pay in instalments.”
He further mentioned the issue of congestion in the wards impeding quality healthcare delivery and appealed for support to renovate an old ward which was in a deplorable state.
GNA