The Daffiama-Bussie-Issa District director of the Ghana Health Service, Joseph Bolibie has appealed to the government to build a hospital befitting the status of the district.

Joseph Bolibie said the hospital, when built, will ease the suffering of the people in the district who go through a lot to seek medical attention.

He made the appeal at Daffiama, when the Member of Parliament for the Daffiama-Bussie-Issa Constituency, Mathias Asoma Puozaa, donated assorted hospital equipment and office wares worth GH¢36,000 to the district health directorate for distribution to the various health centres in the district.

He said patients and pregnant women sometimes walked or travelled over 15kilometers to access healthcare services.

Mr. Bolibie added that the hospital would be a big intervention in the district’s healthcare delivery system and reduce the burden that usually overwhelms the overstretched staff and resources of the regional hospital in Wa.

He said the four health centres in the district were under-resourced in terms of equipment and personnel, which made it difficult for certain ailments to be treated, hence the need to refer such cases to the regional hospital.

The items donated by the Member of Parliament included 20 covered mattresses, 50 pillows with cases, 50 bed sheets, one treatment trolley, one dressing trolley, two wheelchairs, two drip stands, two lying-in beds, two stretchers, two treatment steps and two kick buckets.

The office equipment were two steel filing cabinets, a laptop computer, a desktop computer, a multi-purpose printer which could also scan and photocopy.

The Member of Parliament, who also doubles as the chairman of the Education Select Committee in Parliament, said while he acknowledged the challenges that faced most parts of the region in terms of healthcare delivery, the donation was a direct response to the distress call from the district health directorate over the lack of basic items at the health centres.

“If out of necessity, patients are compelled to use different sides of the same bed sheet because there are not enough to change them, we would not be solving the very reason for people visiting the health centre,” he lamented.

The items, funded from the MP’s Health Facility Development Fund, were also to aid the administrative work of the health centres.

The District Chief Executive for Daffiama/Bussie/Issa, Fidelis N. Zumakpeh, said although the equipment donated by the MP would not be enough to solve all the concerns of the residents in the district, it was important that health personnel stayed committed to their work in order not to compound the health challenges that faced the people.

The head midwife at the Daffiama Health Centre, Gladys Kpierekoh, expressed gratitude to the MP for his intervention, stressing that “it is a relief in many ways that will ease the pressure from various directions”.