Having been born to a nurse and lived the greater portion of my life in a hospital environment with strictest nurse in Ghana (ask any senior nurse in the Ministry of Health about Matron Mary Larbi) when i came across this experience of a friend, i was aghast. What the heck is the health sector coming to these days? From young flashy women who want to use the nursing platform as a springboard to higher things, whatever that is, to very arrogant doctors who think the world revolves around them (I’ve met a few of those too), the health sector is gradually going to ruin and a healthy nation would depend on a healthy populace.
Furthermore i personally think the proliferation of private nursing and health care institutions is not helping matters and these institutions, just like the private universities (another matter altogether i will get to later) are only out to make money and fail to streamline the entrants. once you can pay you are in and nobody cares.
Okay so you wondering what is getting my goat this morning here’s the story and you tell me what you think. I wont edit the story but will just cut and paste it with no emphasis so you see the indignation.
Sally Asabea Abraham wrote:
GHANA POLYCLINICS (A HEAVEN OR A HELL)
On the 2nd of February 2013, I took a taxi from the Nungua Brigade Area to Tema Community 2.
I was “whatsapping “on my phone the whole time so I wasn’t really looking on the road. When we got to the Community 3 Cocobod Branch, apparently the taxi driver was overtaking a trailer and there was an oncoming vehicle with full speed.
The “Head On” Collision was unavoidable, the taxi we hit went into the Community 3 flats and mine hit a pole, when I roused back to consciousness a few seconds after, there was a deep gash on my forehead and blood was oozing out in torrents.
A kind taxi driver offered to take us to the Hospital, luckily or unluckily, the Tema Community 2, Polyclinic was the closest to us so the driver sent us there for treatment.
Upon arrival at the hospital, we were taken into a room which looked like a ward, I was still bleeding from the Head but there was no first aid what’s so ever available, they now checked my pressure n my weight and forgot the fact that I was bleeding from the head.
At this juncture, I looked at the nurse closely to see if she had human eyes or bat eyes. Then they took us out to go wait for the doctor, the wound was still untreated.
So I went to sit on a bench to wait for my turn to see the doctor, when it finally got to my turn, the doctor asked the necessary questions and wrote down some drug for me. All this while, I was walking in the hospital in my blood soaked top and I was the new scare toy for kids as kids were just running away from me, the closer I got to them.
I got to the pharmacy and handed the list to the pharmacist and she said they did not have the drugs I needed for the dressing on the wound. The pharmacist asked me to go out and get it in my blood soaked clothes. At that point, I just burst into tears, aaarrhh where was the service in the healthcare industry???
So I called my older brother to come to the hospital to come take the prescription and go n get the drugs for me.
When he got the drugs for me together with what the hospital had at that time, I went to the dressing room, I got there and I had to pay dressing fee and injection fee before I could be treated.
Wow, it’s too lengthy to get health care when you don’t have money in Ghana. People who cannot afford Private Healthcare in Ghana are in trouble. Oooh and there’s a coke fee to get the nurse to do her work.
THE SERVICE TO GOD AND MAN, that’s not for free, has a COKE fee.
God help us.
So what happened to the National Health our politicians boast about. If even you are ready to pay for your healthcare and you have to pay unconventional coke and malt fees for the attendants to do their work, then how much more the money that doesn’t even come to them in the health insurance scheme.
Let us remember too that a healthy nation is a wealthy nation and human resource is part of the agenda for development in the Millennium Development Goals. The Ministry of Health needs to sit up to do its bit for the country health wise.
I am doing my bit to share this story here so we weed out the health workers spoiling the industry and i am also copying this experience to the President of the Ghana Registered Nurses Association so they can not tell me they are unaware that such cases happen.
Health is wealth!
Ghana my motherland!
kofilarbi 