The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, Rev. Albert Okpoti Botwe has assured Ghanaians that the hospital has enough money to meet its infrastructural needs following prudent structures put in place by management.
His comments come at a time when senior staff are claiming that healthcare services in the hospital are struggling.
Rev. Albert Okpoti Botwe said “money has stopped being an issue at Korle-Bu”, explaining the hospital has been able to generate funds internally.
He has also promised a “paradigm shift” in the operations of the hospital in six months. The makeover of the hospital will be led by a complete computerization of processes in the hospital.
The acting CEO has also touted significant gains the hospital has made in improving infrastructure and healthcare at the 90-year old facility.
Pointing out progress at the Hospital’s surgical ward, Rev. Okpoti Botwe told Joy FM’s Super Morning Show Thursday, Korle-Bu has one of only three state of the art Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scans in Africa, costing about $67 million.
In effect, “if you go to surgical ward and they don’t tell you, you are in Ghana hospital, you won’t believe it”, CEO dared proudly.
The hospital received a new MRI machine, a 640-slide Computerized Tomography (CT scan) machine, and a host of other radio-graphical equipment in 2013 while 13 out of the 23 theatres were being innovated.
The hospital has attracted negative publicity after accusations from senior staff claiming the management is misusing internally generated funds to buy ‘luxury’ vehicles for its nine directors. They believe the funds should be used to directly improve healthcare delivery.
The controversy has resurrected public complaints about the quality of healthcare services: breakdown of the hospital’s lift especially useful to expectant mothers and old patients; lack of drugs and lack of some basic equipment have been popular chorus highlighting poor services.
Some weeks ago, water supply cuts to the hospital’s 2,000 patients and 4,000 staff generated a crisis.
But Rev. Okpoti Botwe explained, a pipe chocked with weeds and mud, caused the shortage which lasted four days. It was difficult, he admited, to even locate the problem because of the hospital’s very old and intricate pipelines.
But this has been resolved and the hospital plans to build a new 2 million-litre reservoir because the current reservoir can only support the hospital for a day.
Procurement challenges
He said the depreciation of the cedi created a procurement nightmare for the hospital because, companies that had won tender after a painstaking process were unable to supply materials.
The suppliers needed more of the cedi to buy the same dollar quantity of materials and were only able to deliver after the National Procurement Authority increased their bids by 20%.
But in the future, these procurement challenges would hopefully become a thing of the past, the CEO said.
The hospital is in direct touch with manufacturers who will be giving a 20-30% discount, a 6-month credit line and a fixed price irrespective of fluctuations in local currency, Rev. Okpoti Botwe said. Story by Ghana|Myjoyonline.com|Edwin Appiah|[email protected]
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