Correspondence from Upper West Region:

The Kpaglaghi Community-based Health Planning and Services (CHPS) compound located at the Jinpenhi community of the Wa East District in the Upper West Region is in dire need of support for its expansion and rehabilitation to help improve healthcare delivery of the people in the area, the Divisional Chief of Jinpenhi revealed.

In an exclusive interview with GhanaWeb on November 29, 2023, Jinpenhi Naa Kadri Ibrahim said despite being a critical facility in serving the healthcare needs of over 10 communities in the enclave, the facility is in a state of serious dilapidation that requires urgent attention.

"The facility is supposed to be providing healthcare to over 10 villages around the enclave. Such villages include: Jinpehi itself, Kpaglaghi, Dapilipuo, Lawanya, Basoyiri, Kpalnya, Tampaala, Naafuliyiri, Gonhi, Teleyiri, Deriyiri, Mambui, and a number of the communities within the enclave and beyond," the Chief stated.

He added that the health post due to its proximity to the market centre in the enclave receives overwhelming patronage from traders on market days which calls for its expansion and rehabilitation to give it a facelift.

"It would interest you to also note that this same facility by virtue of its location within the Kpaglaghi market area, is supposed to be providing health care for the numerous market men and women who come here every week to patronise the market. So anyone who attends the market service and unfortunately falls sick, will have to resort to this facility for their health care needs.

"Unfortunately for us, the facility is facing very serious dilapidation. If you look at the structure of it, we can all agree that it is not in the best of shape," the Chief bemoaned.

He furthered that pregnant women are forced to share the same room with other detained patients due to lack of enough space at the facility.

Jinpenhi Naa who also serves as the Secretary to the Overlord of the Waala State, while bemoaning the lack of office space at the health facility called for support from the general public, philanthropists, well-wishers, and loved ones for the rehabilitation of the facility to ease health delivery in the community.

The affable, soft-spoken Chief in furtherance, also raised concerns over the poor telecommunication network challenges being experienced by residents in the communities.

According to him, due to the challenge of the poor network, the staff of the health facility often struggled to contact referral hospitals any time they needed to refer a patient elsewhere for further treatment.

Jinpenhi Naa Kadri lamented that: "Another major challenge we have here has to do with our telecommunication networks. For the whole of this area, none of the networks is viable here except MTN. Even with MTN, there are only two locations where we struggle to get the network to make calls which are at a particular mosque and a shed in the market.

"So the staff of the CHPS compound do have a hard time running around to be able to make a call when they need to make a referral. Because the standard practice in making a referral I believe is to first contact the referral facility beforehand. So we'll be grateful if the telecommunications networks will do something about this to ease the network here for easy communication."