KUMAWU, DROBONSO NEED BETTER HEALTHCARE SYSTEM

The need for a bigger and modern healthcare facility at Kumawu in the Sekyere Kumawu district in the Ashanti region has never been that urgent than now considering the fact that, apart from population growth, the district has also been split into two administrative districts with the communities located far apart from each especially remotely within the Afram Plains portion. 

Incidentally, it is only the 22-bed Polyclinic at Kumawu that is improvising as the referral facility for both the Sekyere Kumawu and Sekyere Afram Plains districts with the Sekyere Kumawu district alone inhabited by over 67 thousand people. This came to light when Ashanti Today paid a visited the area to report on the dire healthcare situation.

The Sekyere Kumawu district was in 2012 split into two administrative districts with the Sekyere Afram Plains becoming the new district. Sekyere Kumawu district alone has about 67 thousand inhabitants. The two districts have communities that are located far apart from each other especially from Kumawu, capital of the Sekyere Kumawu district with most of the roads in very bad state rendering movement of people from one community to another extremely difficult particularly in the night and in emergency cases.

 Incidentally, the two districts have only one Polyclinic located at Kumawu serving as the referral facility for healthcare. The Polyclinic, which was converted from a Health Centre to its new status in 2015, has only one medical doctor, a Physician Assistant, an Anaesthetist and a Pharmacist being complemented by nurses to serve the huge population size.

 During the visit, it was realized that, the facility has a serious problem of inadequate space for in-patients such that, the available Ward is shared by males, female and paediatric patients. For now, in-patient children can only make do with a three-in-one use of the available beds while some of the adults also have to bid their time for others to be discharged to sleep on available beds.  

To make matters worse, the referral facility has only one obsolete delivery bed for the average of 45 monthly deliveries while the insufficient equipment for surgery is seriously undermining efforts of the scanty medical staff to save lives. There is no standby ambulance to support emergency medical care despite the long distance from Kumawu to the nearest Hospital, which is at Ejisu. 

The Medical Superintendent of the Polyclinic, Dr. Alex Agbanu, described the situation as challenging. It was refreshing to learn however, that management of the Polyclinic, adopting prudent and judicious strategies, has been able to procure machines for full blood count, ultra scan among other equipment while going entirely paperless from the facility’s internally generated funds well ahead of implementation of the government’s policies at the Ports. 

"Averagely we see 70 to 80 patients on the OPD basis. For in patients, often we have overflow, we do not have enough space to take care of them. Recently management had to inprovise by putting some beds on the corridor just to take care of the numbers. There are times when, especially paediatric cases we have to put two or three patients on one bed. Sometimes it is challenging because some of these maternal cases are more or less emergencies for them to be referred from the Sekyere Afram Plains. Some of the referrals come in the night", the Medical Superintendent lamented.

 Dr. Agbanu, thanked the Sekyere Kumawu District Assembly for putting up a new Ward for males and females with ancillary facilities at a cost of 86 thousand Ghana Cedis with the Rebecca Foundation providing beds which are ready for installation to augment the existing facilities. 

When contacted about the healthcare problems in the area, the Sekyere Kumawu District Chief Executive, Samuel Addai Agyekum, assured that, government plans to complete the 60-bed new Kumawu District Hospital which construction had stalled since the change in government. 

The DCE claimed, "the 2019 Budget Statement had made provision for this hospital and it would be completed."