Tema General Hospital: Negligence Of Medical Staff Leads To Baby�s Death?

Hon. Bright Edward Kodzo Demordzi, the Member of Parliament for Bortianor-Ngleshie Amanfro, in the Greater Accra Region has called for remuneration of health sector workers to be pegged to the attainment of Millennium Development Goals (MGD�s) on health. To him, workers in the health sector are always craving for better conditions of service but most of them are not putting in their best to ensure the well-being of Ghanaian patients, hence, the country�s inability to attain the MDG�s. ��when it comes to the crunch, they complain about their meager salary but I always say if the performance indicators suggest they are doing their work, what are the goals you have met before asking for an increment in salary?� Hon. Demordzi asked. He made this suggestion on NEAT FM�s flagship program �Me Man Nti�, hosted by Adakabre Frimpong Manso, after a middle-aged woman, Maame Pokua, gave a gripping account of her ordeal at the hands of the medical personnel at the Labour Ward of the Tema General Hospital. Maame Pokua recounted how she was left unattended to at the Tema General Hospital after she was transferred from the Tema Polyclinic, despite the fact she was in labour and due for delivery in a matter of hours. ��.i got to the General Hospital around 9:30pm. I was told I would be put to bed before midnight by the nurses at the Polyclinic, but I was neglected upon reaching the General Hospital. The medical personnel did not even want to touch my card because, according to them, the workers of the Polyclinic have the habit of referring patients to them when it is late in the night,� she revealed. An emotional Maame Pokua further narrated that in spite of the fact that she was bleeding and needed to be attended to �the nurses refused to even take a look at my folder to check what exactly the reason for which I had been transferred was. I stood on my feet for hours, screaming and bleeding�. �Later, it was a nurse, who incidentally was a neighbor who took my folder and began to shed tears as soon as she read through it. That young nurse was strangely abused by her colleagues verbally for attempting to help out�one of them asked if she knew me and she replied, yes. That was when one of them decided to help the young nurse attend to me but by that time, it was almost midnight�. ��throughout the period I was at the hospital, I could feel I was almost due, so finally when I was attended to, it was evident I had travailed for too long ago�My baby was therefore very weak and despite the desperate attempts by the nurses, they were unable to save the baby�s life,� the grieving woman recounted. But assuring Maame Pokua of investigations into the incident, Dr. Charity Sarpong, the Medical Director of the Tema General Hospital stated an inquiry of the incident would be done to ascertain the full facts of the issue. She further appealed to Maame Pokua to officially lodge a complaint to help facilitate the investigations. Nonetheless, the Member of Parliament for Bortianor-Ngleshie Amanfro maintained that a performance assessment must be institutionalized in order to put a check on health sector workers and at the same time commensurate with remunerations.