The Kumasi South Hospital is recording high cases of teenage mothers unable to afford maternity and medical care. 

Some discharged new mothers are compelled to stay in the hospital for weeks awaiting a miracle to settle their medical bills.

Per the 2020 statistics from the Ghana Health Service, the Ashanti region is ranked first with more than 17,000 cases of teenage pregnancies. 

The Kumasi South Hospital’s maternity unit records girls between the ages of 13 and 18 reporting for delivery. 

According to the Deputy Chief Nursing Officer in charge of the maternity block, Victoria Safoa Osei, the majority of the teenage mothers report to the hospital with no money.. 

She revealed that the hospital staff are compelled to sometimes cater for the bills and other essentials of the mothers.

“In this facility, especially the natives who come here, they normally come, most of them come with nothing. They will come to deliver without having anything. We do get them between ages 13 and 18 most of the time. Once they come, we have to attend to them. 

“We can’t leave them like that. Even at times, it will be the nurses and the midwives, the staff who will be buying food for them, and other things for them,” she said. 

She was speaking in appreciation of a Ghc20,000 donation made to the maternity unit to discharge underprivileged mothers in the hospital. 

About 68 of such mothers were discharged for free on the philanthropic deeds of the Garden of Grace Foundation. 

“This kind of gesture, I think it will go very far because we are in debt to so many of the clients… It will help us go very far,” she said. 

Representative of the Garden of Grace Foundation, Reverend Chris Osei Wusu, indicated that the donation will settle the bills of beneficiaries and allow them to be discharged.