The unavailability of water in the Wa West District Health Directorate has forced nurses in health facilities to walk several hours to towns near neighbouring Burkina Faso to fetch water.

The situation has affected healthcare delivery in the area as the nurses use productive hours to fetch gallons of water to be used in the facilities.

The Wa West Health Services Director, Clifford Venkumwini, disclosed this at the District’s Annual Health Sector Review Conference held at Wechiau on Thursday, February 17, 2022.

He appealed for an urgent provision of safe water to the facilities to facilitate the effective delivery of health services and boost productivity.

“Our facility water coverage is a major concern. A lot of facilities are without access to potable water. Health facilities are without boreholes, and even the communities within which they are sited do not have boreholes,” he lamented.

Clifford Venkumwini also stated that health workers also face accommodation and security challenges which have ripple effects on their output.

“There are instances where staff cannot get a room to rent in the communities where they are posted to. That compels these staff to commute daily for work, impacting on their health, exposing them to robbery and also affecting their finances.”

Meanwhile, he mentioned that “we increased our institutional or skill delivery from 54.4% to 63.6% with a set target of 60. This was achieved by training and deploying midwives to facilities which contributed tremendously to the skill delivery average.”

The District Chief Executive (DCE) of the area, Vida Diorotey, assured that the Assembly will be liaising with relevant stakeholders to address the challenges as soon as possible.

“The security situation in the District, lately, has not been the best, and that is very worrying, putting fear and panic in the people to go about their work.”

“The Assembly, in collaboration with both the Regional and District Security Councils, is mounting up strategies to bring the situation under control,” she noted.