A Network Herald visit to the Supply Department of the Korle-bu Teaching Hospital seem to be casting doubts over interventions of so-called benevolent organizations who receive huge doses of publicity for going to the aid of what is generally accepted to be the sorry sate of health delivery in the country.
Their donations contain loads of undesirable expired products and equipment.
According to the department, 60 per cent of items they receive through these benevolent institutions are either expired, non-usable or long abandoned medical equipment that end up creating embarrassment for the hospital.
Currently, the department is grappling with over 100 cartons of expired drugs, surgical groves syringes and other medical consumables which were donated to the hospital by the Church of Jesus Christ of Later Day Saints last year but would have to be transferred to an appropriate “mortuary” as its final resting place.
Also awaiting disposal are donated items like broken down wooden and metal beds, X-ray machines and orthopedic materials that the officer in-charge of the Central Receiving Bay Thomas Dwomoh, has declared useless as far as the hospital’s needs are concern. “Most of the things, they bring here are totally worthless and we only throw them away after receiving them”. “Not only have they been long discarded from where they are brought, they also lack the requisite information that could help us to if possible, repair and use them.”
He told the Network Herald that his department sometimes gets drugs donations that have long expired for more than four years from individuals and certain institutions without traceable addresses, even if the hospital decides to contact for direction. He was of the conviction that the apparent precarious condition of the country’s health institutions motivates persons and institutions to attempt to give their widow’s mite to end the drudgery of patients at the hospital but this most times rather turns out to be a burden on the hospital.
Moreover, inscriptions on some drugs the hospital gets, he said are mostly in languages the authorities can not decipher hence the doctors either refuse to administer them or do so with lots of unwarranted circumspection. According to him when donations are made “we inform all departments about them and personnel are sent to check their usefulness to particular departments for allocation. “Thereafter most are kept here for some time and thrown away later,”
The problem is apparently not limited to the Korle-bu Teaching Hospital alone but other hospitals in the country that occasionally receives medical donations from individuals and organizations outside this country. The general contention at the hospitals was that as usual, some persons and institutions seem to be hiding behind donations to hospital to either shun paying duties on certain goods they are importing into the country or use the ruse to get procedures fastened for them instead going the normal way.
The appeal was that as much as some of the donations are of extreme benefit to the hospital, it is important that the donors endeavour to as much as possible screen the items they chance upon to curtail the extra cost the hospital spends to dispose of them. The hospital’s Public Relations Officer Mustapha Salifu confirmed the story of his colleague but submitted that he is revising strategies that would stem the tide.
Measure so far recommended include presenting a list of items that hospitals need to persons and organizations that express interest in making donations for conformity and relevance. Drug lists are then forwarded to the Pharmaceuticals department of the hospital for examination, to determine their usefulness before they are received from the donors.
