Correspondence from Upper East Region

GhanaWeb brings you highlights of major news stories from the Upper East Region

Nurses strike affects health care delivery in Kassena-Nankana:

This week has been unusual in the Upper East Region as nurses and midwives in public health facilities in the region joined their counterparts in the rest of the country on a strike action to demand better conditions of service from the government.

The strike action resulted in the total abandonment of duties by the Nurses, midwives and other allied professionals at major health facilities in the region.
At the Regional Hospital in Bolgatanga for instance, where GhanaWeb visited on Monday to ascertain the impact of the action, the usually busy Out-Patient Department (OPD) of the hospital was dead quiet.

There were no Nurses on duty to attend to the teeming number of patients who waited in the OPD to seek care.

The situation was not different at the War Memorial Hospital in Navrongo and the Kassena-Nankana West District Hospital in Paga, as all the wards were locked including the Operation Theatre of the War Memorial Hospital.

Doctors could however be seen in some critical units of the hospitals busily attending to patients. Some of such units were the maternity wards, Neonatal Intensive Care Units, and children’s wards.

A patient’s daughter at the War Memorial Hospital, who identified herself as Mary, was grateful to the Doctors for attending to her father who had a very serious condition. She said through their efforts, her father regained good health and they had been discharged waiting to go home.

“Even though the nurses are striking, the hospital took very good care of my sick father. It’s not as if they are not taking care of the sick people, they are actually taking care of the sick and my father is one of them. The doctors took care of him very well and gave us medication and discharged us. So I am very grateful”.

Rice Farmers in Fumbisi appeal to government to support them with farm machines:

Away from health, Rice farmers at Fumbisi in the Builsa South District of the Upper East Region are appealing to government to support them with farm machines such as combine harvesters and tractors to enable them improve production and also prevent harvest losses.

The farmers are also appealing to government to give them ready market for their harvest to curb the recurrent rice glut losses in the area.

The farmers who made the appeal in an interview with GhanaWeb on the side-lines of the inauguration of the Commercial Farmers Association in Builsa South, said they anticipate improved yield this year, following the fertilizer and seed support received from government through the Savannah Zone Agriculture Productivity Improvement Project (SAPIP) under the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MOFA).

They said the yield and their efforts would however go to waste if the needed machines for early harvest of the rice and ready markets for the produce are not made available to them.

Richard Akoka, one of the rice farmers said, “Government has supported us with fertilizer and seed, we have worked well and are now appealing for help to able to harvest. We need combine harvesters. Even if it will be on credit bases, so that we pay back after sales or else if we get good yields and we are not able to harvest and it dries on the field, the buyers will not buy.”

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