You should count yourself lucky to have a bed assigned you while on admission at the Daboya Health Center in the Savannah Region.

This is because the Health facility faces an acute shortage of bed. Healthcare givers have been compelled by the situation to resort to hourly discharge of in-patients due to inadequate beds.

Whereas some of the admitted patients wait for their turn on benches, others have no option but to receive treatment in plastic chairs.

Hospital beds play an important role in healthcare by assisting patients to obtain optimal comfort.

However, its absence has a detrimental impact on the health of patients.

This phenomenon has become a major worrying situation for in-patients at the Daboya and Mankarigu health centers.

At the Daboya Health Centre, a patient on admission will be fortunate to get a bed to lie on.

Nurses have to do hourly discharge of patients to make way for others who are waiting on benches.

Those whose conditions are critical take over the beds with those with mild conditions made to sit in plastic chairs.

Kwame Ebenezer is a nurse practitioner at the Daboya health Centre and he laments the situation is dire.

“One of our main challenges is the bedding situation because you have cases you have to detain and take care of and the question is where does the patient lie?

“We have to resort to a situation whereby someone will lie for two hours, when you stabilize the situation then you discharge so is more like a shifting thing”

Issahaku Ramatu, a resident of Daboya was compelled to take her infusion in a plastic chair because she could not get a bed to lie on.

“I was told the beds were full and needed to wait for some time for them to discharge someone and I couldn’t wait so I opted to sit in this plastic chair. How can you be well in this situation?”

Emmanuel Osei has been working at the Daboya health facility over the past three years.

According to him, the bedding situation is detrimental to healthcare delivery.

The situation even looks dire at the Mankarigu Health Centre.

Here, some Patients Receive Treatment under trees.

The Daboya and Mankargu health centres all serve as referral centres within the North Gonja District.

With an average daily admissions of more than 15 patients for each of the facilities, the availability of beds for use by patients, still remains a challenge.

For patients, relatives and residents, the situation is frustrating.

“Our MP is a deputy minister of health and we don’t know his seriousness level on this issue.”

In a telephone interview, MP for the area Alhaji Asei Seini, who is a Deputy Minister of Health, described the situation as unfortunate but assured that beds would be deployed to the facility in a weeks’ time.

“I distributed some beds a few days ago and still have more at the central medical store in Accra but I think the challenge is the space to keep them. I will dispatch the other beds within a week to address the entire bedding situation.

“We are facing this challenge be sit here is no hospital but with the springing up of the agenda 111 Hospital, we shall soon overcome these challenges.”

The Sustainable Development Goal 3 targets to achieve universal health coverage, including access to quality essential health-care services and access to safe, effective, quality and affordable essential medicines and vaccines for all by 2030.

But issues like no-bed syndrome will derail the country’s health gains and may further widen the gap towards achieving quality health goal.

By Christopher Amoako|3news.com|Ghana

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