The Paga district hospital, located at the centre of the Kassena-Nankana West District is the reigning best district hospital in the Upper East Region, for the year 2023. The regional health authorities settled on the hospital after rigorous indicators and measurement tools were applied to similar hospitals across all the 15 administrative districts in the Upper East Region.
Authorities of the district’s directorate of health services made this disclosure during presentations at the half-year performance review meeting held this Wednesday in Paga under the theme; “Implementation of the Network of Practice (NoP) in the Kassena-Nankana West District; the Role of Stakeholders”. All nine (9) sub-districts under the district health directorate made presentations on the work of their facilities from January to midyear 2024; including their success stories, challenges and the way forward.
District Director of Health Services, Mr. Alshassan Lawal who set the tone for the day’s proceedings, explained the meeting’s theme as directly relative to the Service’s mandate of achieving universal health coverage and said the NoP is a strategy brought on board by health authorities which among other objectives, seeks to empower and build the capacities of the sub-district facilities so as to reduce the workload on district hospitals and other referral facilities.
Mr. Lawal lauded his staff for their individual and collective efforts that led Paga Hospital to emerge the best among its peers last year but noted that, the district began year 2024 with a host of challenges. Some of these included erratic reimbursements from the National Health Insurance Scheme leading to shortage of medicine at facilities, lack of vehicles for routine office schedules and outreach sessions as well as inadequate numbers of essential staff like doctors and physician assistants. He revealed for instance that, unlike in 2023 when the district had some three (3) doctors, only two remained at post since start of year.
The Director thus hoped that the Authorities will urgently attend to the cries of his outfit so as to help in the effective and prompt delivery of quality health care services to the doorstep of the citizenry particularly, the rural folk at the community level. In the interim, he instructed all sub-district leaders to collate names of all facilities under their jurisdictions that lacked basic health logistics such as BP apparatus kits and other minor supplies and furnish his office with same so that such needs can be immediately handled.
Kassena-Nankana West District Chief Executive, Hon. Gerard Ataogye who also addressed the meeting said, he always appreciates the trying conditions under which health professionals in the district were working to ensure citizens in the area got the needed health services. He gave assurance that the assembly would continue to explore all available contacts and channels to draw the required support for the health sector. He revealed for instance that, he was in constant talks with authorities in Accra to ensure the timely completion of the district’s Agenda 111 hospital project.
Hon. Ataogye described the health sector as “the engine of life and the sector where professionals really sacrifice to get the job done” and said whenever health issues arrived on his desk, he attended to them with urgency. He also stated that, the Assembly has plans to push onto the SOCO project, a few health facility projects such as the Katiu South CHPS in order to hasten their completion for use.
In a presentation for the Paga District Hospital for the half-year period, Administrator Mr. Cletus Timbabuya disclosed that the hospital actually started as a health centre in 1981 and only got upgraded to hospital status in June 2020. It has a catchment population of 96,572 with a staff strength of 217, across all sections.
Mr. Timbabuya disclosed OPD attendance over the period in 2024 to be 12,713 against 6,680 for 2023. Of the number, the insured for 2024 stood at 10,785 against the 2023 figure of 5,786. Non-insured for the same time frame is 1,928 against 894 respectively. Meanwhile some of the top 10 OPD morbidity conditions for the half-year included diarrhoea, ulcer, acute urinary tract infections, malaria and pneumonia among others. The presentation also revealed that, zero maternal deaths have been recorded with a total of six (6) still births on record.
In a related development, Presidential Advisor on Health at the Office of the President, Dr. Anthony Nsiah-Asare led a team to inspect ongoing works at the Paga Agenda 111 hospital project during which he emphasised the importance the President attached to those projects nation-wide and charged the contractor to double-up his efforts and to deliver the job by end of November 2024. Traditional leaders, staff of the district health directorate and management of the Assembly congregated at the project site to welcome the Presidential Advisor and his team.
