The bad road network linking Buka and Jambussie communities in the Wa West District of the Upper West Region is adversely affecting access to timely health care services.   

Residents of Buka said the community was about two kilometers away from Jambussie, where they accessed health care services, but the poor road network made it difficult to get to that community, especially during the rainy season.   

A resident, Sumani Abu in an interview said the women, children and aged suffered the most when they were ill and needed prompt medical attention.   

“When it rains, we have to carry the pregnant woman at our backs, how can you back a pregnant woman? When the woman delivers in the house too and you send her to the hospital they will fine you,” he said.   

“It’s all because our road is not good. Sometimes some women deliver on the road and we carry them with the placenta to the heath facility, yet they ask us to pay money because she did not deliver at that facility.”   

The residents appealed to the Wa West District Assembly to fix the road to make it motorable in the rainy season.   

They also appealed to the Assembly and benevolent organisations to provide the community with a maternity facility and a midwife to cater for pregnant women.   

The Assembly Member for the Buka Electoral Area, Mr Nicholas Gbara said the Assembly constructed that road in 2004 but had since not been rehabilitated.   

“It is in the documents at the District Assembly that there is a road from Buka to Jambussie, but anytime they grade the road from Dorimon to Jambussie they end there,” he said.   

“This road had never been graded since it was opened in 2004. I am following up and hoping that the Assembly will do something about it so we can use it.”   

Mr Gbara added that the community members had to sometimes engage in communal labour to fix the road with stones to enable them use it in the rainy season.