If this headline were posted on social media today, the emoji symbol to have been used to summarise the story and the candid reaction would have been a broken heart.  Why?

Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, the premier teaching hospital and once-upon-a-time the nation’s number one healthcare Centre, has recently been in the news, not for a breakthrough medical feat but for unpleasant and heartbreaking stories concerning patient care and bed management, often referred to as “no bed”.

I have often responded to some battering, well in favour of the hospital, using my own near-death experience and the critical care I received decades ago. This same facility, once the most sought-after teaching hospital, has not always been a thorn in the flesh. 

To me, the local saying that “if you won’t praise me, don’t spoil my name” will always be my defence for these days, the prestigious medical Centre.

Unfortunately, for the many who have lost dear ones due to negligence, poor communication, poor bed management and attitudinal handling, the story of Korle Bu brings loads of sorrow and fury.

No bed syndrome

One of the stories that has thrown some dark shadow on Korle Bu hospital lately is the poor bed management system case that claimed the life of a 29-year-old engineer who was rushed to three major public hospitals after a fatal hit-and-run accident in Accra a couple of months ago, but was denied emergency care because “there was no bed” to admit him. 

Though the premiere hospital was the third and perhaps too late a stop for critical intensive care for the injured young Engineer, it has suffered many more battering and finger-pointing than the other two hospitals. 

Sadly, it is even alleged that when the family went to the mortuary to identify their relative, the body had been dumped in an ineffective cold room with many others, almost near decomposition. 

Definitely, people hearing such stories would be emotional about Korle Bu Hospital. 

One’s information is that the once-upon-a-time most sought-after Medical Centre is 100 years old. From all the claims, patients and or their relations are enumerating, it certainly looks like Korle Bu needs a highly escalated ICU assistance and with more oxygen to stand on its weak legs at 100 years. From whence cometh that help but government?

For a health institution which has served patients in excess of its capacity for over one hundred years, one can see what the hospital has gone through and continues to go through, especially in a system where maintenance and regeneration are not part of our culture.

Attachment

I have a close attachment to the premier hospital, and such consistent attacks on its services tend to bring me nostalgic memories of fifty years ago, when I was rushed there for critical care. In my case, involved in a freak accident at home, I was rushed to the then prestigious hospital for care. It was the professionalism of the staff on duty at the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) that helped me survive the first golden hour.

With multiple fractures, a dislocated hip, and some serious lacerations on both legs, the bleeding was without exaggeration. I was wheeled to the theatre after the initial stabilisation at the ICU. My home for the next three months was at the female ward of the orthopaedic section,

My life-saving in-and-out journey at Korle Bu, which continued for a whole year 50 years ago, puts me in a better position to appreciate this premier health care institution and to plead that whatever is possible to restore Korle Bu to its past glories should be a priority of the Health Ministry.  

After so many years, the hospital’s own internally generated funds (IDF) alone should have been able to sustain its continued prosperity, including expansions, the acquisition of equipment, training, and good salaries, as well as everything that would have made it a proud teaching referral hospital of modern times. 

Sadly, the hospital keeps losing its best medical professionals to other countries. Why can we not curb this drain, maintain our trained brains, equip them well so they can remain and stay committed to their Hippocratic oath to serve in the best interest of patients and save their own, “no beds” or not? 

Korle Bu still has the potential to give life and quality, one at that, to all its citizens. If it could do so over half a century ago, to some of us even at a time when machines and technology were not at their peak, surely, it can do so in this twenty-first century of three generations after.

As a country, we should not stand by for the premier hospital’s name to continue to be dragged in the mud as if it is nothing. It did not have its match, not in Ghana and certainly not in the sub-region decades ago.

Korle Bu Teaching Hospital should be provided with the oxygen it needs to breathe, not remain a thorn in our flesh.

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The writer can be contacted via email at vickywirekoandoh@yahoo.com