Talensi district hospital faces infrastructure challenges

The Talensi District Hospital in the Upper East Region, is facing infrastructure challenges which is affecting health service delivery.

The facility was built in the 1960s as a clinic and is too small to run as a district hospital. The facility has not been rehabilitated or expanded for years.

Dr Paschal Apanga, the Medical Superintendent of the Hospital said this when Dr. Nana Gruer of the Health Initiative Ghana Foundation, an NGO, presented a brand new motorbike to the District Directorate of the Ghana Health Service ( GHS) at Tongo.

Dr. Apanga said the male, female and maternity wards are too small to admit patients, whiles there is no children’s ward and those on admission had to join the adults in their wards.

“Two to three children are made to sleep on one bed. We are compelled to discharge patients within 24 hours instead of 48 hours to make space for admission.

“In a month, we admit up to 1,500 to 2,000 patients. The situation gets worse when it comes to the peak admission season, the months of August to November,” he said.

He said; “Another major challenge is that, the facility lacks space for laboratory tests as well as hymnology and chemistry analyser for testing.

The Issue of Infrastructure is quite alarming,” he said. T

he District Director of the GHS, Ms Evelyn Naaso Domeh, said the facility was upgraded to a District hospital in 2014, but did not have an office and staff accommodation.

She lauded the efforts of Dr. Gruer for donating the motorbike and providing money for the training of more Community Health Officers to man CHPS compounds.

The organisation had also built a CHPS compound at the Accra site, a deprived mining community in the area.