Ghana needs a robust and standardised emergency care systems – Dr Owusu Sekyere

By Christabel
Addo, GNA

Accra, Oct.16, GNA – Dr David
Owusu Sekyere, an Emergency Health Physician at the University of Ghana, has
called for the institution of robust and standardised emergency care systems in
all health institutions, to help save more lives.

He said currently such systems
were non-existent in majority of healthcare facilities across the country due
to the lack of qualified emergency care professionals and infrastructure,
leading to poor management of patients who needed emergency care.

“This leads to further
complications as these services are handled by untrained and inexperienced
frontline healthcare personnel at the Out Patient Department level, with delays
that impede effective access to emergency care services,” he said.

Dr Owusu Sekyere made the call at
the opening of the 6th Biennial Conference of the Ghana Association
of Quasi Government Health Institutions (GAQHI) in Accra on Wednesday, which
was on the theme: “Emergency Healthcare in Ghana; the Role of Quasi Government
Health Institutions.”

The Organisation, which is made
up of health facilities of government sectors or institutions whose business
were anything other than health, included those that are operated by the
security services, Education, Defence, 
Communication, Mining and Energy, Environment, Science and Technology,
Finance, Agriculture, Transport and the Arms of Government.

Dr Owusu Sekyere underscored the
importance of instituting and enforcing national standards as far as emergency
healthcare delivery was concerned, without which access to quality would be
greatly compromised.

He commended GAQHI for the
sustained support in building both infrastructure, human resource base among
others, to improve healthcare delivery in the health sector.

He advised GAQHI to encourage its
members to acquire their own ambulances, and collaborate with the National
Ambulance Service (NAS), to train their Emergency Medical Teams (EMT), whose
services could augment that of the Service’s limited fleet of vehicles in cases
of national emergencies.    

Dr Owusu Sekyere again called for
strengthen partnership between the NAS and GAQHI, to activate effective systems
including telephone hotlines, on which people could seek expert directions to
provide first aid for patients before they got to health facilities.

He insisted that effective
emergency care should begin from the community level (Pre-hospital), where lay
persons or members of the public must be empowered with basic knowledge and
skills to be able to identify emergency situations, know what to do and where
to get help.

Dr Emmanuel Ankrah Odame, the
Director of Policy and Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation, Ministry of Health
(MOH), said promoting health for all was key in accelerating Ghana’s vision for
Universal Health Coverage (UHC), which aimed at ensuring quality and timely
access to healthcare without financial difficulties.

He acknowledged the tremendous
contributions of GAQHI as a key partner of the Ministry, saying, its current
focus on emergency healthcare to improve quality and increased access to
service delivery was line with the overall health sector objectives.

He said the Ministry was already
at the table with GAQHI discussing various concerns and needs, saying, “We must
redesign our health emergency systems to ensure quality.”

“There is currently a huge
dividend in sustaining the country’s working force, due to challenges including
securing financial clearance for employment, and there is the need for a
critical evaluation of the healthcare value chain to ascertain what is needed
at each point in time, in order to make the system as seamless as possible,” he
said.

Dr Odame said the Ministry
remained committed to its collaboration with GAQHI, and expected its members to
work hard to address the numerous health needs of Ghanaians.

Dr Christian Kofi Amenuveve, the
National President of the Ghana Association of Quasi Government Health
Institutions, stressed that sustainable UHC was unachievable without ensuring a
pragmatic approach to developing an all-inclusive inter-sectoral emergency care
system in the country.

He said since emergency care was
not limited to the domain of health practitioners alone, GAQHI facilities were
strategically positioned to lead the inter-sectoral approach to this key
service development.

He, however, said the major
drawback to this laudable idea was the lack of Legislative Instrument that
sought to standardise health practice across various mother institutions under
different administrative regimes, and appealed to the Parliamentary Select
Committee on Health to lead GAQHI through the process.

He said the Organisation would
continue to offer its expertise in emergency care and support the government to
scale up projects to systematically address the needs of the country.

GNA