Surgical Department at Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital allowed to rot away

Surgical Department at Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital allowed to rot away

Ghana is 60 plus years old but it seems we are yet to pick up live. Live they say begins at 40 but here we are at 60 plus and we still have our tertiary medical facility in this horrible state.

Politicians “come and go” with big promises but end up with nothing much to show.

Background of Korle-Bu Teaching hospital

Korle-Bu Teaching hospital is the oldest and biggest tertiary teaching hospital in Ghana built in 1923 by the colonial masters under the administration of Sir Gordon Guggisberg.

Population growth and the proven efficacy of hospital-based treatment caused a rise in hospital attendance in Korle-Bu. By 1953, demand for the hospital’s services had escalated so high that the government was compelled to set up a task force to study the situation and make recommendations for the expansion of the hospital.

The government accepted and implemented the recommendations of the task force which resulted in the construction of new structures, such as the Maternity, Medical, Surgical and Child Health Blocks. This increased the hospital’s bed capacity to 1,200.

Korle-Bu gained teaching hospital status in 1962, when the University of Ghana Medical School (UGMS) was established for the training of medical doctors.

The UGMS and five other constituent schools are now subsumed under the College of Health Sciences to train an array of health professionals. All the institutions of the College however, undertake their clinical training and research in the Hospital.

The current state

Our checks at the current infrastructural status revealed that there hasn’t been any proper maintenance regime deployed at the hospital ever since the colonial masters handed it over to us. A whole department of surgery has been allowed to rot away. So who is responsible for making sure that the structures at the hospital are always in good shape?

It’s high time we hold those that have in their possession our taxes accountable to the development of this country.

Photos of the current state of the surgical department at Korle-Bu