The government has been urged by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) to provide teaching hospitals with the necessary medical equipment to enhance healthcare services nationwide.
The Committee determined that the main issues influencing service delivery in the country’s teaching hospitals were limited funding, a lack of medical equipment, poor maintenance, low technical capacity, and extended equipment downtime.
The committee’s review of the Auditor-General’s performance audit, which looked at the procedures for organising, acquiring, and maintaining medical equipment to guarantee its constant availability in teaching hospitals, led to the recommendation.
The audit evaluated the operations of the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital, Tamale Teaching Hospital, and other teaching hospitals around the country between 2018 and 2023.
The PAC chairperson, Mrs. Abena Osei-Asare, voiced concerns over the lack of vital medical facilities, including as a cardiac catheterisation laboratory at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital, while presenting the Committee’s report in Parliament yesterday.
She stated that because several patients needed immediate cardiac intervention and had to be transported to Accra for treatment, the unavailability of the facilities had contributed to their deaths.
“Mr Speaker, the hospitals generally conducted assessments of their medical equipment and incorporated their needs into procurement plans. The problem, therefore, was not the identification of the need,” according to Mrs. Osei-Asare.
“The deeper problem was inadequate funding, insufficient equipment, maintenance failures, weak technical capacity and prolonged equipment downtime,” she added.
As a result, the committee suggested that the Ministry of Health give specialised medical equipment and infrastructure for teaching hospitals first priority.
Additionally, it called on the Ministry to work with the Ghana Medical Trust Fund and the Ministry of Finance to raise the money needed to buy the necessary equipment.
Mrs. Osei-Asare also noted that the audit found that the teaching hospitals’ biomedical engineers lacked the specialist expertise needed to maintain and repair advanced medical equipment.
She pointed out that in many hospitals, engineers were forced to contract out repairs that might have been completed in-house if workshops with the necessary equipment were available.
To increase their capacity and enhance healthcare delivery, she consequently advocated for a concerted national retooling initiative for teaching hospitals.
“A non-functional medical machine is not merely an idle public asset. It may mean a delayed diagnosis, a lost source of hospital revenue or a loss of life,” Mrs Osei-Asare said.
Source: newsthemegh.com