The Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital has in a four-year period, lost ¢1.1 billion to absconding patients.

Additionally, it granted waivers to 1,614 patients who were unable to pay and this amounted to about ¢2.1 billion within the same period of 2001 to 2005.

This was disclosed, at a press conference by the management of the Hospital in response to recent comments made by the Commissioner for Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAH), Ms Anna Bossman that the detention of patients, especially nursing mothers who were not able to pay for their medical bills, was illegal and an infringement on their human rights.

Dr Ben D. R. T. Annan, Medical Director of KBTH, addressing the press conference, said the issue of non-payment of medical bills was a major cause for concern to the hospital.

"It is important to place the issue in the appropriate historical context before making further comments. Having realised that government alone could not bear the cost of healthcare, the PNDC government, in 1985, through L.I. 1313 introduced the Cash and Carry system to share the cost of healthcare with the citizens.

This was done to help generate resources to buy drugs and other consumables needed to make public hospitals functional. Prior to the introduction of the scheme, vital medications and consumables were lacking in most public hospitals", he said.

He said that certain lapses were identified in the scheme after its introduction notable among which was the inability of some patients to pay their medical bills after treatment.

Dr. Annan said to address this shortcoming, the hospital instituted a mechanism to identify those who genuinely could not pay for their bills so that the hospital could give them waivers.

He explained that the Social Welfare Unit of the hospital carries out this system of verifying the background of patients.

He therefore debunked the assertion that the hospital detains patients, and said people wrongly term the period during which the Social Welfare Unit conducts investigations into the socio-economic background of patients as a period of detention.

Dr. Annan said, "it is important to note that some of the nursing mothers normally feign inability to pay their bills and in the process of investigating their backgrounds, they abscond from the hospital.

He said the hospital authorities were of the view that the interest of the so called ‘detained’ patients would have been better served if CHRAJ had called for more effort at getting such people to register with the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), since most of them had not done that.

He said that since CHRAJ has been conducting some research into the hospital’s activities, it was of expected that the findings would be discussed with the hospital authorities before being made public.