Two staff of the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital
have tested positive for Coronavirus.
The two are a nurse and a doctor who work at
the Department of Medicine and Department of Child Health respectively, an
internal communique sighted by Citi News indicated.
The two are currently being taken care of in
the hospital and are responding to treatment.
“We wish to inform staff we are working to
establish the primary source of the infections. Staff are therefore entreated
to remain calm and follow the basic hygiene protocols.”
“Management is committed to ensuring that all
staff are safe and protected. As we distribute PPEs to all departments,
measures are far advanced to procure adequate protective gears for all staff,”
the communique added.
Korle-Bu doctors threaten to withdraw
services
These cases come in the wake of concerns from
health workers about inadequate Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for
health workers in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak in Ghana.
A few days ago, doctors at the Department of
Accident and Emergency at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital expressed
dissatisfaction with the level of preparedness of the department in combating
the COVID-19 pandemic.
In a Memo signed by the Doctors to their Head
of Department and sighted by Citi News, they decried the usage of a side ward as an isolation center without the necessary PPEs.
“We write to express our general
dissatisfaction with the preparedness or lack thereof of the department to
combat the current COVID-19 pandemic. We also wish to express our displeasure
with the events surrounding the hospital’s first confirmed case.”
“Firstly, the pandemic; an existential threat
to us, you will agree has to be handled with decisiveness and transparency. It
is based on this that, we are aghast at the actions or inactions taken before,
during and after the case had been confirmed.”
The said ward, according to the doctors
hosted the first patient who tested positive at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital.
They threatened to withdraw their services if
a proper isolation centre is not provided and a quick testing of all staff of
the department for Coronavirus is not done.
“We will like to remind management of the
department that, it has failed woefully in providing adequate protection for
the staff and as such, we’re left with little choice than to resort to
protecting ourselves in the face of clear and present danger.
“We will like to state; with no fear of
equivocation that, if these measures are not put in place, we will be forced to
stop attending to patients to the endangerment of the patients, ourselves, our
loved ones, and Ghana as a whole,” portions of the memo said.
COVID-19: Nine new cases push Ghana’s count
to 214
Nine new COVID-19 cases confirmed in Ghana
has increased the country’s case count to 214 as at 06:00GMT on Sunday, April 5,
2020.
Six of the cases were confirmed in the
Greater Accra Region while the remaining three were recorded in the Ashanti
Region.
One of the patients who contracted the
disease in the Greater Accra region, a 37-year-old woman, had no travel
history, neither did she have any contact with another confirmed case.
In the Ashanti Region, one of the three new
patients also had no travel history and had not come into contact with any of
the already confirmed cases.
“Among the cases from Greater Accra, one is a
37-year-old woman with no history of travel nor contact with a confirmed case.
One is a repeat test of a traveler under quarantine who was initially negative
but converted to positive on repeat test. Four are contacts of confirmed cases
with no symptoms and were detected during the enhanced contact tracing and
testing,” the Ghana Health Service indicated.
It added that, “Of the three (3) cases from
Ashanti region, two (2) are Ghanaians who traveled to Ghana from France within
the past 14 days and the third one is a Ghanaian who has no history of travel
out of the country nor contact with any confirmed case.”
By: Marian Ansah
Source:
https://citinewsroom.com
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