The Gulf of Guinea Northern Regions Social Cohesion (SOCO) project, Bolgatanga Zonal office has completed and handed over a CHPS compound to the Tuedema Community in the Builsa South District of the Upper East Region to bridge the gap in access to quality health care.
The Builsa South District directorate in the Upper East Region is passionately appealing to the ministry of health to as matter of urgency post midwives to the various CHPS compounds in the District.
The Gulf of Guinea Northern Regions Social Cohesion (SOCO) project has initiated and completed projects in the area of Health, water, Sanitation, education, Agriculture, youth empowerment, arts and culture and other projects in the fifteen municipal and districts in the Upper East Region.
Over 450 projects in the various sectors of the economy have so far been completed and handed over to the beneficiary communities.
SOCO has done 1210 projects in the five regions of the North and Oti Region as part of the entire project outlook of 150 million facility from the international Development Association/International Bank for Reconstruction and Development of the World Bank Group.
The project is expected to deliver resilient community infrastructure and assets through a Community-Driven Development approach (CDD). The proposed Project is been implemented over a period of five (5) years.
The Project Development Objective is to improve regional collaboration and socio-economic and climate resilience of border-zone communities in the target northern regions of the Gulf of Guinea countries exposed to conflict and climate risks.
With over 40,000 population in the Builsa South District, health care is paramount to the well-being of residents especially in the rural areas where access to health care is a challenge and the few primary health facilities are begging for staff.
The 26 CHPS compounds in the district are lacking midwives and nurses which is the the link between the community and the district hospital in terms of referrals.
At the handing over of a newly constructed CHPS compound at Teudema by SOCO, midwives from other health facilities were brought to take care of the facility instead of new staff.
The Builsa South District hospital in Fumbisi has only 10 midwives instead of more than 20 which is putting more workload on the limited work force.
The Builsa South District health director,
Mr. Emmanuel Kob-Puo was sad at the midwife and nurse deficit in the district and has called for more staff especially at the lower facilities
“In terms of health service delivery, when you look at this district, where we find ourselves, the hospital here is the referral centre even for part of the North East. I mean the Yagba, the referral cases here and part of Upper West.But the staff situation is really a big challenge for us. Critical staff like the medical doctors. Since the hospital started, it’s just one medical doctor we have.And we have been struggling to get at least one or two to join, but it has not been possible. The director has followed up here and he’s also working hard to see where he can get the staff to come. But I think you are familiar with the story that was the 35 that were posted to the Upper East. And as of December, only four of them reported. So still looking at the four that have reported, if they stay, where we will send them. And we are hoping that we will get one. We are just hoping. But we asked this one in the facility. He’s the one for day, night, all the time, 24 hours. He cannot get time to travel even for his own family. So that is one, the medical doctors”, he said.
“There are also some of the lower facilities that were having midwives, but they failed to work up to three, four years, or five years, and once you join the family or have a critical issue, you cannot hold them. So we still have some of them who have left, and their facilities are there without midwives. Where we want to commission today is a headache. We have to look at where we can get the midwives to go.
So midwives, there’s a gap there, a big gap. And when we come to the other nurses, the hospital, we shouldn’t be dealing with less than 20 midwives.That’s a minimum, at least. 20 could I still, I mean, if you look at a typical hospital, we should be dealing with more than 20. But if we get 20 at the hospital currently, I think it will help us a lot. Currently, with what they’ve added, we are now having 10 at the hospital. And then they have the lower facilities. They refer to the hospital. Currently we have 14 in the lower health facility. We just received one. We have to work around to have one for another distribution”, he added.
The district Chief executive for Builsa South, Musah Anne, assured the health directorate of the Assembly’s efforts in getting more health staff to the facilities. She has therefore encouraged health workers to accept postings to deprived districts and that the Assembly will provide a condusive working atmosphere for them
The Bolgatanga SOCO Zonal coordinator, Samuel Agyarko Larbi said SOCO will continue to provide health infrastructure in the district and urged authorities involved to compliment that effort with staff.
The district director of health services, Mr. Emmanuel Kob-Puo disclosed that, four critical CHPS compounds are with no single midwives while the district has only 15 midwives for 26 CHPS compounds and the whole district has one medical doctor working without shift.
A total of 35 medical doctors were posted to the upper East Region but only five have reported making health care services difficult for residents.
END.