The Director General of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), Dr. Ebenezer Appiah Denkyira, has joined calls for public hospitals to charge patients extra fees to help cater for the power needs of such facilities.
[contextly_sidebar id=”uW4CSAUWghFXmN3wLfUaGuet0bUPZNl3″]In recent times, most of the public hospitals have been contemplating charging patients extra to enable them power their various plants due to the intensified load shedding exercise.
Explaining his stance to Citi News, Dr Appiah Denkyira said: “Just as the driver in the lorry station will do when fuel goes up, he will just spread the cost to the passengers. If it is a secondary school and there is a problem there, at the PTA meeting, they spread the cost to the students.”
He questioned why public health facilities cannot do same saying,” why don’t we spread to the patients who are coming? Small, small, we can do this.”
According to Dr. Appiah Denkyira, the idea is “brilliant” and it must be allowed to be implemented since the Finance Ministry no longer pays the electricity bills of public hospitals.
He told Citi News, that the power situation has forced public medical facilities to pay huge amounts to power their power plants.
The GHS boss said although the various hospitals explained to the extra costs to patients, the policy had to be put on hold “because the media gave it a negative light.”
“Now when the dumsor comes, they no longer have anything because the Ministry of Finance is no more paying the electricity bills and they tell the ECG to come to us to collect their money,” he said.
Dr. Appiah Denkyira stressed that the current energy crisis has brought undue hardship on the public hospitals and urgent mitigation measures are needed to support their operations.
By: Efua Idan Osam/citifmonline.com/Ghana
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