Medical Director at Shai Osudoku District Hospital, Dr Kennedy Tettey Coffie Brightson, has expressed deep concern over the alarming rate of nurses departing the country.
He said these were well-trained and qualified people who have acquired certain specialised skills “to use in helping us manage our patients and manage the hospital as a whole but they leave for greener pastures.”
Dr Brightson made the comment when the Street Sense Organisation, an NGO championing road safety in the country, presented branded mattresses and washing soap worth over GHC 37,000 to the hospital.
He, therefore, called on the government to look at the situation and see how best to come up with policies that would help address it.
“It is a continuous thing. Only yesterday one of nurses left us. This is not only happening in Shai Osudoku hospital, but it cuts across all other hospitals in the country.”
He said another challenge facing the hospital was electricity supply and expressed the hope that government was working around the clock to solve the problem.
“The problem we have here is that we spend a lot of money on fuel to keep the hospital running. I am thinking that we have a very vast roof that hits the sun rightly from 7 am and this vast roof can be converted into a solar farm, so we can harvest power from the farm and use it,” he added.
On maternal mortality, he said: “These days, periodically, we get one or two or three, just because everybody when they are practically dying somewhere else, they push them here, so sometimes by the time we turn around to save them they die. But when you die on our compound you become our statistics, you become our data.”
Dr Brightson said that for five consecutive years, not long ago, with increasing antenatal attendance and increasing deliveries, they maintained zero maternal mortality.
He said even during the COVID-19 era, in 2020, they were the only hospital that saw an increase in deliveries of 9.6 per cent and in 2022 it also increased by about 6.7 per cent.
“So, it means that every pregnant woman targets our hospital as a place they can have safe deliveries. It does not necessarily mean that we are the best, but we are only trying to be the best.”
He attributed their success story to their teamwork, adding, “when you move around and you see the place, the first thing that comes to mind is that this place has no challenges.”
“The fundamental thing we do here is that we play teamwork a lot. So, whatever you see is because of our teamwork that we have been able to achieve this,” he explained.