The Chief Executive Officer of the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital, Dr. Oheneba Owusu Danso, has called for a national dialogue and consensus on the best way forward for a lasting solution to the ‘No bed’ syndrome at major hospitals in the country.
He noted that the situation brings into focus the urgent need for health policymakers, emergency medical care providers and other stakeholders to continue to engage on how to make emergency care easily available and efficient for critically ill patients across the country.
Dr. Owusu Danso made the call in Kumasi at the 1st Emergency Medicine Conference.
The Conference was organized by the Emergency Medicine Society of Ghana. The Conference was to commemorate 10 years of the introduction of emergency medicine into the Ghanaian healthcare system.
Emergency Medicine involves the provision of timely and expert care to critically ill persons, accident and trauma victims.
The module was introduced by the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital in partnership with the University of Michigan in the United States 10 years ago.
The Provost of the College of Health Sciences of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Professor Yaw Adu Sarkodie, disclosed that in view of the relevance and critical need for more experts in the practice, the KNUST has begun the processes to create the Department of Emergency Medicine to train more experts in that field.
The Chairman of the Faculty of Emergency Medicine of the Ghana College of Physicians and Surgeons, Dr. George Oduro called for an upward review of the tariffs for emergency medical care for critically ill patients to commensurate with the cost of care in the country.
The Chief Executive Officer of the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital, Dr. Oheneba Owusu Danso, urged other health institutions in the country to support some of their nurses and physicians to be trained in the field at KATH in order to strengthen their critical care for patients.
This, he noted, will help augment the services being provided by the few Emergency Medicine practitioners in the system.
