Pressure continues to mount on the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) to launch a load-shedding timetable.
The newest organisation so as to add its voice to the calls is the Ghana Medical Association (GMA).
This follows a broadly circulated video on social media by which a lady claimed her three-day-old child who was in an incubator on the Tema General Hospital died following erratic energy outages.
However, the hospital stated the facility outage had nothing to do with the stated dying.
But Acting General Secretary of GMA, Dr Richard Selormey stated the erratic energy outages is affecting hospital administration, therapy, and all facets of operations.
Speaking on Joy FM’s News Night on March 28, he defined that your complete sector runs on secure electrical energy, implying that when electrical energy is minimize off with out prior data, many issues can go flawed.
“And so, throughout the nation, a lot of the hospitals the federal government has rolled out, what is named the hyperlinks and digital administration system. And so energy outages disrupt all these processes as a result of, for instance, sufferers have to be verified, these with NHIS and different non-public insurance coverage have to be verified on the system earlier than they begin the journey via the hospital.
“When these techniques are off, it disrupts this as a result of they can’t be verified or it takes a lot, for much longer to get this carried out for them to start to obtain providers inside the facility. Beyond this are these sufferers who could also be on the theatre desk who could also be present process dialysis, and numerous types of therapy that require energy to energy machines and tools that serve these sufferers.
“And so it is very important that we put the issue into context. It’s not about when only somebody dies, but people may even suffer irreparable damage just because the power has been broken. I’m sure you read the Tema General Hospital statement where they said it took two hours to solve the problem,” he stated.
Dr Selormey defined that typically, well being services have needed to rely on torch lights to hold out surgical procedures, which was a big subject.
He stated the affiliation was not bothered about what individuals wished to name the present energy outages. However, they had been involved concerning the timing and the consequences of those outages triggered.
Additionally, he said that the influence of the erratic energy outages was not solely on sufferers’ lives but in addition on the financing of turbines utilizing gasoline, which incurred vital prices, particularly as a result of gasoline costs have escalated.
He stated these prices would overburden the hospitals, so it might assist if there was a timetable so they might reschedule sure procedures and finances forward of time.
READ ALSO: