Nandom: Inadequate Facilities To House COVID-19 Patients Hampering Fight

Inadequate infrastructure to accommodate persons confirmed and suspected to have contracted the Novel coronavirus in the Nandom municipality of the Upper West Region is hampering the fight against the pandemic in the area.

The Nandom Municipality has, so far, recorded 81 suspected cases of the COVID-19 with one confirmed positive diagnosis.

The Municipal Director of health services, Genevive Yiripareh, speaking at a mini-durbar of Chiefs and Queen Mothers at Nandom, noted that her outfit was compelled to transfer the confirmed case to the Upper West Regional Hospital in Wa because the only withholding centre at the municipal health facility has one washroom.

“Suspected plus confirmed cases cannot be put in one place, we could manage one side for suspected and another side for confirmed. But with the washroom, the hospital struggled but was able to only renovate one side. With the rising trend, if we are not able to refurbish our unit and we happen to get more cases like Sissala East is having, and if the regional hospital says it cannot contain them then we will be running into challenges as far as management of the cases is concerned,” she said.

“We may not be fortunate like Wa, most of the cases in Wa have their own bungalows and so they are being managed from their bungalows.”

She also decried that the municipal health directorate is currently depending on the benevolence of the public to feed persons suspected to have contracted COVID-19 due to lack of funds.

“We need support, ideally, we should be feeding the patients that we have at the hospital but some of them have to bring food from the house. It is not easy to manage it like that, we have received some donation of food items but we wonder how we are going to manage it in future with the rising trend in suspected cases.”

The Upper West Region, as at today [Wednesday, May 06, 2020] has 19 confirmed cases of the coronavirus pandemic.

---citinewsroom