More businesses continue to lament over the negative impact of erratic power supply in the country. The latest to join in the lamentation is Afrikids Medical Center in Bolgatanga.
The Administrator of Afrikids Medical Center, Godfred Njindan on Friday April 16, 2021 told A1 Radio the situation has increased operational cost of the facility. By extension, the situation is adversely affecting healthcare delivery.
Mr Njindan told William Jalulah, host of A1 Radio’s news and current affairs analysis programme, Reporters’ Visit that some of his facility’s machines including X-ray have been damaged as a result of the erratic power supply.
He said, “In fact, the power situation is negatively affecting service delivery in my facility. For instance, if the power goes off, clients have to be kept on hold because we are using a folderless system and it depends on electricity. So immediately the electricity goes off, the whole place is shut down. Even though we have UPSs and other gargets that hold the power for sometime, it’s not doing us well. As we speak now, some of our UPSs have blown. We have to resort to a generator which is also at a cost. For instance if power goes off for 24 hours, we have to spend over Three Thousand Ghana Cedis (Ghc 3,000.00) on diesel to serve our cherished clients and that is an additional cost to the operational cost of the facility.
Some of our equipment have also been damaged. For instance, our X-Ray machine is down as a result of power outage situation. Our air-conditioners are blown and as we speak now, we have to engage a technician to come and check some of our air-conditioners. An air-conditioner that is cooling the server room is damaged. So you can imagine if the server itself goes down, the whole place is shut down for a folderless system depends on a server.
Again, when it happens that way, clients on admission are tempted to abscond because they are not able to bear the heat in the wards. Already we are in the heat season and the fans in the wards are already blowing heat so you can imagine a situation where the fans are no more working and you have to be on admission in the ward.”
Mr Njindan also said the situation is a threat to clients on admission especially those who will have to be operated upon.
He said, “Because in our quest to serve the clients better, give them quality of care, we have to put on the generator. You can imagine that somebody is at the operating theater being operated on the power goes off; you cannot say you will not put on the generator. You have to save lives and that is why we are here and all those things build up to the cost.
Not Afrikids alone, I’m sure other sister facilities are equally experiencing the same thing and if it goes on that way, I can imagine how it’s going to affect health service delivery which is very important within the municipality and the region as a whole.”
He, therefore, appealed to the government and stakeholders in the power supply sector to find a lasting solution to the problem in order that businesses will survive.
Source: A1Radioonline.com|101.1MHz|Ghana
