The 37 Military Hospital is now struggling to contain the pressure, especially emergency cases, following the extension of the strike by the Ghana Medical Association (GMA).
From the 37 Military Hospital in Accra, Citi News’ Kojo Agyemang reports that the Emergency, Trauma and Surgical ward of the hospital is in a “crisis situation.”
According to him, patients are made to sit on plastic and metal chairs to receive medical care, while others are made to lie on the floor.
The situation according to the matron in charge of the charge of the emergency, trauma and surgical department, Lieutenant Col. Owusu Akorful is because of the increased numbers.
“It hasn’t been easy with us at all in fact we are 24 bedded but a day we get as much as high as 55 patients, yesterday we had 60 so you can just imagine. We are making use of stretchers, chairs in fact anything that is available; even the chairs that we nurses have to sit on we have to give them to the patients to sit on. If you say you won’t receive them they have nowhere to go,” she said.
She further predicted of a short supply of some requisite logistics in the coming days.
“It was yesterday that we were short of disposable gloves but I when I wrote to the medical stores they were able to supply me with some, I think very soon we are shall run out of these logistics,” she added.
Meanwhile, Lieutenant Col. Owusu Akorful says management has been compelled to cut down the time and number of days it had to attend to patients because of limited medical supplies and space.
“At first when there was no crisis, if a patient on admission will spend say seven days at the surgical and trauma ward, it has been reduced to two or three days so that there will be space to accommodate new ones. The wards too are reducing the number of days the patients spend there so that we can move patients from the accident and emergency centre to the wards,” she stated.
A doctor at the emergency and trauma ward of the hospital recounted how the situation is affecting their operation,
“I’ll say we are overwhelmed because the numbers have doubled or trippled and we are doing more than we would have done on a usual day so it’s been very stressful for us,” she said.
Doctors have been on strike for almost three weeks now but a crunch general assembly meeting of the association last Friday further extended the strike by two more weeks.
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By: Kojo Agyemang/Citifmonline.com/Ghana