The Wa Regional Hospital, which is a referral facility in the Upper West region, is suffering from inadequate equipment and critical lack of staff to provide quality health care to patients.

The facility could only boast of one gynaecologist who also doubles as a surgeon.

The hospital needs surgeons, dentists, physician specialists, pediatricians, ear, nose and throat specialists and psychiatry doctors, Alhaji Abu Yahaya, Chairman of the Regional Hospital Advisory Board told the Ghana News Agency in Wa.

He said the hospital has to depend on a low capacity x-ray machine it borrowed from the Nadowli District Hospital to diagnose patients who suffer fractures and other complications from accidents.

A number of patients go to Nadowli, Jirapa and Nandom District Hospitals for x-ray diagnoses, and that had resulted in some of them resorting to local treatment at bone-setters centres in the region.

The absence of modern x-ray machines among others had also put additional cost and burden on patients who had travelled long distances to the facility only to be told to go to other facilities outside Wa.

Alhaji Yahaya appealed to the Ghana Health Services (GHS), public- spirited individuals, donor countries and non-governmental organisation to help provide the hospital with x-ray machines and other equipment.

The GHS should also consider providing the hospital with the right calibre of medical personnel and necessary equipment for quality service delivery.

Alhaji Yahaya expressed worry that the new regional hospital, which is under construction, would be a “white elephant” if the current situation at the regional hospital is not improved to encourage doctors and nurses to accept posting to the region.

The Advisory Board Chairman was of the opinion that doctors and nurses posted to the facility would likely turn down the offer because of the lack of equipment.

He commended some medical doctors from other regions who have been coming to help their colleagues at the hospital.