The Minority in Parliament is demanding an exemption of public health facilities from the ongoing load shedding known in the local parlance as ‘dumsor’.
The Minority has expressed how crucial it is to run a health facility without electricity due to the lives of patients at stake.
The Ranking Member of the Health Committee in Parliament, Kwabena Mintah Akandoh, during an in-studio interview on TV3’s News Central Thursday, March 28, 2024, said the government needs to conduct a health audit in all the facilities across the country to ascertain the power capacities of the facilities, should the ECG deny them supply from the national grid.
“The immediate sensible thing to do is to consider whether or not, you’ll give a timetable, you should exempt all these health facilities in this country from these power outages. Then you’ll have to consider to do power audit in the various health facilities whether they have standby generators and the capacities that they have.
“We on the Minority side on the Health Committee and the Minority as a whole are demanding that all our heath facilities in the country must be exempted from these load shedding going on and the Ministry and Ghana Health Service must begin a health audit in all the health facilities,” he counseled.
The Member of Parliament for Juaboso added that the debts owed by the facilities are as a “result of government withdrawing its subventions from various health facilities with respect to utility bills.”
To address that challenge, he said the government should have conducted “an audit into the internally generated funds (IGF) of the health facilities because the public health facilities don’t charge as much as the private facilities due to affordability.”
The lawmaker further advised the government to take care of those facilities who cannot afford to cater for their electricity bills from their IGF since the Constitution requires the government to provide healthcare for everyone in the country.
Reacting to the mother who allegedly lost her baby at the Tema General Hospital due to the power outage, he said the woman’s report could either be true or otherwise. However, no health facility can survive without power, the reason the government must ensure electricity is readily available for them at all times.
“It will be very difficult for them to admit that it is due to the power cut that caused the death of the baby. Usually on the first-hand information that’s what happens. Unless there is a probe into the matter before you’ll be able to establish that the various causes of the death of the baby. It is also a fact that every hospital needs electricity to function. This cannot be contested so even if it is not the power outage that caused the death of the baby, it is possible that power outages can cause the death of people in other health facilities,” he explained.
