The Team Leader – Ghana Health Team of GIZ-Ghana, Dr. Holger Till, has described how issues of malfunctioning hospital equipment contribute to low and poor health delivery in a country.
Speaking during the launch of Upskilling Biomedical Engineers For Ghana project in Accra, Dr. Till detailed a classic example of how the non-availability and malfunctioning of equipment contribute in this regard.
“If you go to a hospital and you see motivated nurses, motivated doctors, you see highly-motivated and well-qualified staff to treat people, and then you and you see a very nice, new machine – some big x-ray machine or ultrasound machines, and you meet some (sic) not even unpacked. And then you see, as a doctor, and you see the patient and you know, if I could have an ultrasound machine now, I can see how the baby is and I can do the right measures, but the machine is not working.
“This is really a big frustration we had, and what I see now is… if you go to the hospitals now, there is already a big change because the topic of BME is taken serious. We can ask ourselves, is it enough? And I can say it isn’t,” he explained.
He further called for partnerships with health institutions in the country to provide a win-win situation for both parties, urging the private sector in particular to take advantage of this.