The Director-General of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), Dr. Anthony Nsiah-Asare, has promised to address the understaffing situation at the Greater Accra Regional Hospital by employing more health professionals as the facility prepares to operationalise it Intensive Care Unit later in January.

He said due to the inadequate number of doctors, nurses and specialists, the Intensive Care Unit of the hospital was not fully operational. Dr Nsiah-Asare said this during a working visit to various units of the Hospital in Accra on Friday.

He expressed gratitude to Management of the Hospital for the clean environment and also for their effort to address some general challenges facing the hospital. Speaking on some of the challenges, he said there was a limited number of staff including nurses, specialists, pharmacists and doctors.

Dr Nsiah-Asare said since most of the health conditions were not covered by the National Health Insurance Scheme, the GHS would try to factor some cost in their annual budget to ensure the hospital was financially viable and continue giving quality care.

“Ridge Hospital has the best Intensive Care Unit (ICU) in the country with 36 beds, therefore, we should have intensive care doctors and nurses to ensure that the unit operates effectively,” he said.

“We would engage the Regional Director of the GHS to provide nurses to support the seven Intensive care nurses currently on the field.

“Since the hospital is still under a year warranty, we want to test all the machines so that any defect identified and fixed by the contractors,” he said.

Dr Nsiah-Asare assured the public that the Greater Accra Regional Hospital’s ICU would start operating fully on January 15.

“I will make use of the human resources and students nurses who pass through the hospital to enable them to use these machines before they start working”.

He assured the public that nurses would be absorbed into the system to fill the physical space available, adding that, “The public should expect the GHS to give total health care to citizens.”

The GHS, he said, would look more at clinical care, and continue prevention through vaccination, health education and Health promotion, as well as Health rehabilitation.

He also assured the public that the GHS would integrate mental health into the health system in order to reduce the stigmatization of people with mental health problems.