Ghanaian Health workers: Sacrifices & The Shaming.

The ordeal workers in the Ghanaian health sector go through to deliver the best of healthcare with the insufficient logistics available in the system can not be compared to labour pains. Yet the same clients we strive to save sit in the comfort of their homes and say all sorts of things with the rise of an issue they have little knowledge about. Thanks to social media.

 

Let’s start with the “No Bed Syndrome”, when a client is sent to the hospital and there is no bed, the nurses forget all the discomfort and start nursing on a stretcher and you feel nurses don’t do enough? There are people in our hospitals who are on admission but are sitting in plastic chairs and receiving treatment. Do you blame the nurse for not getting them beds? The logistics health workers are given by the government is woefully inadequate, yet they have being saving lives. Health workers improvise most of the time just to save lives. I have personally delivered a baby with polythene bags tied around my hands because there were no gloves. Delivering babies with torchlight as the source of light is normal at certain facilities. Health centers are not functioning well not because nurses are lazy or lack the right attitude for the profession. The government is simply not doing things right.

 

You call an ambulance to transfer a client to a bigger facility for care and they tell you they would have to confirm from the bigger facility whether they have bed available for the client or not. If the facility answers in the negative, ambulance won’t come for the client. Nurses are not responsible for beds in the hospitals. The closes is the Administrator who will definitely blame the government. Taxis and private cars are now turned into ambulances with nurses holding up bags of infusion just to make sure the client is getting enough fluid to sustain the client. Nurses have died through accidents when referring a client from one facility to the other.

 

Nurses without health insurance are even sometimes not entitled to health care in their own facilities.

 

A nurse was knocked down by a car on her way to work which affected her legs and she needs to go thorough surgery, and the hospital in question is demanding a deposit of GH¢3000 before the surgery is done.

 

Health workers are human beings too. They have blood flowing through their veins and arteries.

 

I know health workers who go the extra mile to pay hospital bills for clients and even purchase medications for them out of goodwill. Health workers even donate blood for clients just to save them.

 

You think it’s easy for them to see patients die due to lack of certain logistics? Facing a committee to defend your case as to why a client you were nursing died is not something anyone would want to go through.

 

We are talking about no bed syndrome yet a 600 bed capacity hospital facility is under lock and key with logistics expiring and decaying. You sit in your offices and read what ever you want to read about your predicament and even diagnose yourself before coming to the hospital, you sit in front of the doctor and go like ‘I have read that, I have read that” and start giving directives as to what the doctor should do. If the doctor tells you his/her piece of mind, you say doctors are rude. Do you praise your customers who try to show you how to do your things?

 

Let’s be realistic. Health workers are humans too and they are doing more than enough to save lives. Granted, some nurses and doctors have attitude. But we must know no health worker is interested in seeing patients die. No one. I am Delali Amede, a professional midwife.

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