Health workers at Ahenema Kokoben Health Centre in the Atwima Kwanwoma District of the Ashanti Region are forced to use torchlights of their mobile phones to deliver pregnant women due to lack of a standby generator.
The nurses, midwives and doctors always have to resort to other sources of electricity whenever there is power outage, a situation, they say, is taking toll on quality health delivery.
Speaking on Akoma FM‘s current affairs and political show GhanAkoma last week, Physician Assistant at the Ahenema Kokoben Health Centre George Kwadwo Aboagye lamented that “the facility since its inception some 25 years ago has never seen a stand-by generator or alternative power supply aside the national grid, a situation that is really affecting health delivery here”.
Lack of equipment and unhygienic conditions at health facilities in the Kokoben Health Center have been identified as barriers to quality healthcare for pregnant women and patients.
Aboagye told host of the show Aduanaba Kofi Asante that several challenges such as intruders due to unavailability of fence wall and basic equipment such as stand-by generator at the facility “force we the health workers to drive to near-by communities to charge our chargeable lamps and torchlights to assist our services”.
Describing the situation at the labour ward, he explained that midwives go through an ordeal when there’s power cut during delivery.
“We don’t do delivery in darkness, in case there is a problem with the patient, you would not know. There should be adequate lighting before you attend to a patient, it is headache we are going through as a midwives,” he lamented.
Ahenema Kokoben Health Centre is the only government health facility from Trede to Okomfo Anokye Teaching Hospital.
Mr Kwadwo Aboagye further appealed to government, corporate Ghana and faith-based organisations for swift intervention to assist the facility to ensure a facelift and quality health delivery.
