GHS develops estate maintenance manuals

Accra, May 3, GNA- The Estate Management Unit of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), has developed a number of manuals to protect buildings and other physical infrastructure that are central to health care delivery in the medical centres.

The manuals provide information on preventive maintenance among staff of the Service and the communities.

The documents have information on the maintenance of water and sewerage systems, electrical installations, repair of doors, collecting and sorting of waste, management, primary health care and the health of the community and organizing community participation in preventive maintenance.

Mr Yahya Khasem, Head of the Project Management and Planning Unit of the GHS, made available copies of the manuals that contain simple illustrative drawings, focusing on materials for construction from relevant building trades and crafts among other things to the Ghana News Agency.

The manuals include "Building Maintenance- Mini Repair", " Environment Sanitation", "Building Maintenance- For Hospital Maintenance Technicians",

" Building Maintenance- Hospital Management Manual" and "Community Participation Training Manual".

The foreword of the Community Participation Training Manual said, " Communities and other agencies involved in the construction of health facilities often overlook the recurrent cost implications of any new constructions.

"As a result buildings are neglected thereby accelerating deterioration and the consequent demands on the budget to rehabilitate..."

The manuals indicated that more than 50 per cent of preventive maintenance is cleaning, stressing on cleaning of health facilities as an important activity.

The Environment Sanitation manual said, planned preventive maintenance is less expensive while the cost of planned preventive maintenance is usually integrated into normal recurrent budget, which cuts down on the cost of rehabilitation of facilities.

Mr Khasem said the country's procurement law was very conducive to maintenance since procurement played a central role.

He said the law was helping to reduce waste to the barest minimum and " the country is getting value for money".