Kwahu South District improves upon cure of TB patients

Mpreaso, (E/R), Feb. 5, GNA- The Kwahu South District was able to improve upon the cure rate of Tuberculosis (TB) patients from 46 per cent in 2003 to 56.1 per cent last year.

This was announced by the Kwahu South District Director of Health Services, Dr. Joseph K. L. Opare, at this years annual review meeting of the District Health Management Team(DHMT) at Mpreaso on Friday. He explained that, the district was able to achieve the result by adopting a method whereby, whenever a TB patient was identified, the health authorities provided drugs to the nearest health facility of the community where the patient resides for the dispensing to the patient. Dr Opare said such an arrangement reduced cost of management of the disease to both the health authorities and the patient and also improved upon the supervision in the management of the patient. He said last year, the district recorded only five cases of measles due to a series of interventions adopted by the district as against 363 cases recorded in the year 2000.

Dr Opare said maternal deaths in health institutions in the district reduced from 12 in 2003 to 11 in 2004, saying, four of such cases were recorded in the communities in the district.

He described the situation as "discouraging" and called on health workers and opinion leaders in the district to help ensure that the district did not record any maternal death this year.

The Director called on health workers in the district to encourage queen mothers in the Kwahu area to form adolescent reproductive health clubs to educate the adolescents on how to prevent maternal mortality. He advised that opinion leaders should negotiate for community transport system so that anytime that a pregnant woman was in labour, she could easily get means of transport to the nearest health facility to be delivered by a skilled attendants.

Dr. Opare announced that to encourage more pregnant women to deliver in health facilities, the Ministry of Health is introducing the free delivery system to all pregnant women in the district who delivered at a government health institution.

The Principal of the Holy Family Nursing Training College, Mrs Angelina Amponsah, appealed to the District Director of Health Service to help her school to get its share of the one billion cedis, which was allocated to her school and the Atibie Midwifery Training School for development projects last year.

She said though the Ministry of Finance published the allocation of funds to the two institutions, up till to date, they had not received the funds.

Mrs Amponsah also appealed to the Director to help her school to overcome the payment of electricity bills, saying, though she was aware that some health institutions and training colleges do not pay electricity bills, her institute is often saddled with the payment of 20 million cedis electricity bill a month and because of that the school authorities had banned the use of electrical gargets by the students.

The Kwahu South District Chief Executive, Mr Raymond Osafo-Gyan, who chaired the meeting, said the District Assembly is sponsoring some students at the Akim Oda Community Training School and the University of Ghana Medical School to help improve upon the medical staff situation in the district.

He said last year, the Assembly cut the sod for the construction of doctors bungalows to help ease accommodation problem of doctors in the district.

Mr Osafo-Gyan said the Assembly is also sponsoring the provision of treated bed nets to help reduce malaria among pregnant women in the district.