Conduct power audits in all health facilities – Minority reacts to incident at Tema General Hospital

The Minority in Parliament has told the Ministry of Health, and the Ghana Health Service (GHS) to conduct power audits in all health facilities across the country to ascertain whether or not they will have electricity to function at all times even if the national grid goes off.

The opposition lawmakers also demand that all health facilities in the country be taken out of the current load shedding taking place.

Juaboso Member of Parliament and ranking member on the health committee of Parliament Kwabena Mintah Akandoh indicated that power cuts in the health facilities are likely to cause avoidable deaths hence their call for these facilities to be exempted.

He was speaking in relation to the situation where a nursing mother lost her three-day-old baby at the Tema General Hospital on Tuesday, March 26, 2024, allegedly due to a power outage at the facility.

Rashida Abubakar Tetteh, the 24-year-old troubled mother has disclosed that she was on admitted at the Post C-S ward of the hospital when she was told by a doctor that the son couldn’t survive due to the non-functional medical equipment during the power outage.

“I went to visit my son, but I didn’t see him. I was waiting outside when one doctor came to inform me that they were sorry, but due to the lights out, my child could not survive because the incubator was not working.

“It’s painful, they have killed my child because of dumsor; I am in pain. We have nothing to say to the hospital. A hospital like Tema General said they didn’t have petrol in the generator. Is this how we are going to act in this country,” she cried.

The Tema General Hospital however denied reports suggesting that the Tuesday outages caused the fatalities at the facility.

In a press release issued on Wednesday, March 27, the hospital dismissed these claims as baseless and urged the public to disregard them. “It is worth noting that no lives were lost as a result of this power outage,” an excerpt of the statement said.

The statement emphasised the hospital’s unwavering commitment to prioritizing the health and safety of its patients above all else.

“The Tema General Hospital assures the general public that the Facility will continue to put the health and safety of its patients at the core of its business,” the statement concluded.

Speaking on this matter on News Central on TV3 on Thursday, March 28, Mintah Akandoh said “It will be very difficult for them to admit that it is due to the power cuts that caused the death of the baby, unless there is a probe into the matter you will not be able to establish the cause of the death of the baby. But that notwithstanding, it is a fact that every health facility needs electricity to be able to function well, it is also a fact that power cuts can lead to the death of patients so even if at that particular time it was not the power cuts that caused the death of the baby it is possible that power outages in other health facilities can cause deaths.

“So as a matter of urgency, we the Minorty side on the health committee and the minority as a whole, demand that all our health facilities must be exempted from this load-shedding going on, and then the Ministry together with the GHS must begin immediately power audits in the various health facilities.”

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