Private hospitals use Korle Bu as dumpsite for dying patients – CEO

The CEO of the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, Dr Opoku Ware Ampomah, has dismissed the long-held perception that a major referral facility is a place of death for critically ill patients.

This bad publicity, he explained, is borne out of the fact that people and private hospitals have used Korle-Bu as a dumpsite for already dying patients.

In his view, Korle Bu has the expertise to offer treatment to all patients and save lives to the extent that people in developed countries travel to Ghana to have their surgeries and treatments done at the facility.

Speaking on the Class Morning Show on Class91.3FM today, Thursday, 6 October 2022, Dr Ampomah noted that no matter how critical a patient’s condition may be, when transferred to Korle-Bu, they do their best to save the person.

He told show host Kofi Oppong Asamoah that “there is a reverse flow happening now where there are people who are in developed countries, who actually travel to Ghana to come and have their procedures, surgeries done".

He, however, made it clear that “Korle Bu’s brand has suffered a certain damage" and "that’s why some people think Korle Bu is a bad place but some of the things we’ve suffered in silence are that if you go to any of the private hospitals now, many of them are very good at keeping you, but then when they realise that ‘this guy, things are not going on well, he’s about to die,’ they quickly send you off to Korle-Bu and, of course, we cannot send anybody away, so, they come to Korle Bu and if you look at our data, the deaths that happen within the first 24 hours are quite high, so, it means that the person came in a very critical condition and, of course, we will do our best to save the situation but when the person succumbs, in the obituary, they say he died at Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, so, everybody thinks Korle Bu” is a place where people die.

He added, “But I don’t blame our colleagues in private hospitals, the way the environment is, they also want to maintain a certain kind of brand.”

Currently, the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital is the third biggest referral centre in Africa.

The facility can boast 2,000 beds, 21 clinical and diagnostic departments and three Centres of Excellence. It also has an average outpatient attendance of 1,500 with about 250 inpatient admissions.

The clinical and diagnostic departments include Internal Medicine and Therapeutics, Child Health, Surgery, Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Anaesthesia, Family Medicine/Polyclinic, Accident & Emergency, Psychiatry, Reconstructive Plastic Surgery and Burns Centre and Accident & Orthopaedics. Others are Pharmacy, Pathology, Laboratory and Radiology.

The Hospital also provides sophisticated scientific treatment procedures in various subspecialties such as Neurosurgery, Paediatric surgery, Dental/Oral maxillofacial, Ophthalmology, Ear, Nose & Throat (ENT), Renal, Orthopaedics, Oncology, Dermatology, Reconstructive Plastic Surgery, Cardiothoracic Surgery and Radiotherapy & Nuclear Medicine.

Source: Classfmonline.com