Cape Coast, Feb. 2, GNA - District health directorates, individuals and some organisations owe the Central Regional Hospital more than 503 million cedis in services rendered to them last year.

Dr Darius Kofi Osei, hospital director, made this known on Thursday, during the third open day of the hospital at Cape Coast. The hospital, which is the only referral in the region, sets aside a day every year to showcase its activities to the general public. He said the various district health directorates under the free delivery programme owed the hospital 202 million cedis, whiles companies and individuals owed a total of 301 million cedis, this he said was greatly affecting planning at the hospital and appealed to them to endeavour to settle their debts.

He said the hospital received a total amount of 10.5 billion cedis from its internally generated funds, government and donors support for the upkeep of the hospital.

Touching on the staff of the hospital, he said it has a staff of 494, including 20 doctors with many of them, expatriates and 141 nurses. He said the hospital has only two expatriate surgeons and no physiotherapist and attributed the situation to lack of accommodation, stressing that, even if a physiotherapist was posted now, the hospital would not be able to accommodate the person. He said currently, most of the expatriate doctors were sharing bungalows and appealed to the government and Ghana Health Services to provide the hospital with more bungalows.

Dr Kofi-Osei said malaria and anaemia were the top medical causes of admissions in hospital last year, whiles hernia and accidents cases also topped the surgical cases the in same period. He also expressed concern about the increased number of hepatitis B cases being reported in the region with many of them coming from the prisons.

He said in all, a total of 7,870 people were admitted at the hospital with 6,661 treated and discharged, whiles 663 of them died, putting the mortality rate at 9.1 per cent Dr Kofi-Osei announced that the hospital's dialysis unit was now in operation and that by the end of the year, all the six machines in the unit would be fully operational.