Erratic power supply: babies dying at the Nsawam Government Hospital

At least, three babies have reportedly died this month at the Nsawam Government Hospital in the Eastern region due to the frequency of the country's worsening power crisis.

The three were among twenty babies who were being rushed to the Intensive Care Unit for care after lights out there.

Health officials at the hospital are concerned the power crisis has also led to rapid increase in the rate of infections as staff do not have power to sterilize their equipment.

Joy News' Beatrice Adu who was at the hospital described the situation as dire.

It was excruciating for these mothers who delivered after a nine-month pregnancy only for their babies to die before their eyes because there was no electricity to power the ventilator needed to keep their babies alive.

Esther Ocansey, a midwife there explained: “If you have a baby that you know you can resuscitate and help to breathe and the instruments are around but there is no light to help that baby breathe but you lose that baby, you just imagine the situation you find yourself [in]…it is disheartening that within few minutes that something could be done to help the baby survive it wasn't and then you lose the baby.”

She said although the hospital has a generator it takes about 10 minutes to power it up but these babies could lose their lives within a minute of no support.

That's not all. The rate of infections has shot up because there's no power to sterilize equipment. Often, she said, tools are locked in the autoclave machine which is used to sterilize them. 

This situation, she said, has forced staff of the hospital to use unsterilized tools on some clients.

At the maternity ward, Madam Joyce Assor who has her two young children on admission receiving oxygen said she always gets scared when the lights go off at the hospital.

The power situation is so dire that the hospital cannot power their water pump for its reservoir, Beatrice observed.

Hospital administrator Konlan Kofi says the hospital is unable to buy some essential tools for some departments because GHc12, 000 of the Hospital's internally generated funds has been used to buy fuel to power the generator whenever the lights go off.

“[Things] like needles and other consumables that we need in the system but this money was used purposely to buy fuel,” he said.

He is therefore appealing to the ECG to implement its special concession policy for hospitals to save them the needless deaths and challenges.