KATH staff asked to adopt new work attitude

KATH staff asked to adopt new work attitude
February 10, 2010
Kumasi, Feb. 10, GNA - Professor Adjei, Chief Executive of the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH), has called on workers of the hospital to adopt new work ethics that put the patient at the centre of everything they do.

He asked the workers to explore ways of making patients' experience at the hospital pleasant.

Prof. Adjei was opening the 2009 end-of-year performance review meeting of staff of the hospital in Kumasi on Wednesday.

The two-day meeting would take stock of achievements and challenges during the period and adopt strategies for better services delivery, this year.

Prof. Adjei said the past year was characterised by challenges such as strike action by junior doctors over unpaid fuel allowances, erratic and unreliable reimbursements from the National Health Insurance Scheme for services provided to clients, which resulted in severe financial difficulties and the frequent breakdown of equipment.

He said despite these, the hospital reinforced its dominant position as the main referral tertiary health facility in the northern sector of the country.

Prof. Adjei said Cardiostart International, a US-based medical charity, assisted the hospital last year to perform cardiothoracic surgeries free of charge on seven adults.

He said the hospital also performed free paediatric heart surgeries on 13 children with support from the Children Hospital Boston, Harvard University, US.

Prof. Adjei said for the first time in the history of medical training in West Africa, KATH, working in concert with the University of Michigan and the Ghana College of Physicians and Surgeons, has started a residency programme to train world class emergency medicine physicians and the first batch would be out in the next three years.

Residency programme in family medicine has also been established at the hospital to strengthen its capacity to meet the huge clinical burden placed on it by virtue of its strategic location.

The facility with the help of Himalayan Cataract Project in the US and the USAID, is also constructing a 620,000-dollar modern eye clinic, to provide ophthalmic care of international standards to patients.

Prof. Adjei appealed to government to assist the hospital to secure the necessary funding to complete the maternity and children's block project, which has been under construction for about 35 years now.

GNA