Women in labour take turns for delivery in Upper East

Checks by Starr News have revealed that women in labour at the Woriyanga Presbyterian Health Centre in the Upper East region of Ghana are compelled to take turns for delivery due to inadequate space at the facility.

Medical folders holding private records of patients at the centre are also in danger of falling into wrong hands as there is no safer place to keep them apart from an open corridor.

Located in the Garu-Tempane District, the centre has not seen any major expansion since its establishment in 1995 to meet the demands of the growing population of patients. And with only one consulting room shared by at least two clients at the same time, the confidentiality rights of patients enjoined by the Patient Charter are being breached.

“The maternity ward, the delivery ward, is nothing to talk about. It is just a cubicle. When two clients are in labour at the same time, one has to come out and the other one will be in. We get deliveries because this is the only health centre. The OPD (Out-Patients Department) is a small cubicle. All the folders are there on shelves. Those shelves are full. And there is no confidentiality because a patient’s folder is not to be kept where anybody can come at any time, open the folder and see what the owner of the folder is suffering from. I think that there is no confidentiality in our facility here because of the way our OPD is,” the Physician Assistant in charge of the centre, Felicia Aneateba, lamented.

A number of patients spoke to Starr News, adding their voices to the frustrations of the staff of the facility.

“Patients normally have to sleep outside whenever the place is choked up. If only they can come to our aid. The health centre is serving many of the communities around. Looking at the way the folders are, so opened? it is too bad. Anyone can just come and take them away,” a patient (name withheld) groaned.

Until recently, the facility was periodically confronted with acute water shortages that affected maternal and infant health with women who had just given birth using water carried by donkeys from distant dams to bath and to wash their clothes at the health facility.

Meanwhile, a borehole provided by World Vision Ghana in collaboration with Voltic Ghana
Limited was commissioned Thursday at the facility. Another borehole was commissioned on the same day at Ankara, a community near Woriyanga. World Vision has announced it will make funds available to mechanise the two boreholes.

The intervention, according to the Executive Associate to the National Director of World Vision Ghana, Rev. Daniel Salifu, is to help deal with sanitation-related and waterborne diseases. Corporate Affairs Manager of Voltic Ghana Limited, Cyrus deGraft-Johnson, disclosed that more communities would have their share of boreholes from the company in the future.