IT HAS emerged that due to poor infrastructure and electrical connections at Wenchiku Community-based health Planning and Services (CHPS) compound in the Chereponi District of the Northern region, health workers are forced to rely on flash or torchlights to administer health care if they encounter emergency cases in the evening.
The Assistant In Charge of Reproductive Care and Child Health, Portia Antwi, said because there is no power at the injection room, they rely on torchlight to administer injection to patients in the evening or send them away with their ailment.
�It is not a favourable position we have to deal with, even with the dim lights we have here we struggle to see and having to use torchlights is worse off,� she told the DAILY HERITAGE.
The Officer In Charge of the Reproductive Unit, Cynthia Bapuoh, also lamented that, anytime there is a downpour, the CHPS compound gets flooded making it virtually impossible for them to administer health care.
She added that, they do not have a vehicle to transport a patient, particularly, in emergency cases thus; they have to wait for several hours after calls to request for an ambulance from the district hospital.
�In labour cases, the families of the patient rely on motor to convey pregnant women to district hospitals which takes hours. Due to that, it is not exciting working here as a health worker,� she asserted.
Mrs. Bapuoh observed that fortunately, they have not witnessed maternal deaths based on the strict adherence to basic health rule explaining that �after observing their conditions for at least three hours, when we detect the slightest complications, we refer them to the district hospital.�
Touching on how the inadequacies were affecting health delivery, she intimated that �because the communities are far from the clinic, when you refer a patient, they tend to believe their conditions are worse.�
She appealed for the renovation of their facility and the provision of vehicles to enable them carry outreach programmes.
She said it is a challenging work in the community because there are two nurses taking care of 80 communities, adding that they are only supported by one general nurse and three community nurses.
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