The Management of the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) has directed comprehensive policy review and standard operation procedures (SOPs) in all of its Directorates and Units to address lapses.
This comes in the wake of recent incidents involving the missing bodies of three still-births at the referral facility’s labour ward.
The Chief Executive Officer of KATH, Professor Ohene Adjei who announced this, said a management sub-committee has been set up to co-ordinate and ensure the successful and timely conduct of the review exercise.
He was speaking at the 2013 end-of-year performance review meeting of the hospital in Kumasi.
According to him, although it was undeniable that some of the Directorates, including the Child Health and Obstetrics and Gynaecology (O&G), faced severe problems of congestion, it was important to design appropriate measures to make sure that best practices were not compromised.
He described last year as a challenging year, but said the hospital managed to achieve significant successes in the areas of infrastructure development and operations.
It procured and installed four new sets of oxygen manifolds to enhance the distribution of oxygen at a cost of GH¢185,000.00.
Another amount of GH¢468,410.00 was spent on diverse instruments such as baby warmers, biopsy forceps, flexible cystoscope sets, endoscopic cameras, laparoscopy instruments, mobile ultrasound machines and infusion pumps among others.
He said the Child Health, O&G, urology and general surgery units were the major beneficiaries of these procurements.
Prof Ohene Adjei also spoke of the creation of Intensive Care Unit at the O&G directorate for the management of obstetric emergencies, and said it was one of its high marks during the period.
This formed part of efforts to reduce the high maternal mortality in the region.
He said the facility was also involved in an extensive outreach programme for district hospitals in the Eastern, Western, Central and Ashanti Regions, under which teams of specialists from the Child Health and O&G Directorates had been assisting to raise the quality of pediatric and obstetric care at those peripheral facilities to “reduce the number of bad cases referred to the hospital.”
Prof Ohene Adjei reiterated the determination of the Management he was leading to engage the units and directorates to identify solutions to challenges they were confronted with to improve performance.
Source: GNA