Health Ministry needs to revise two weeks isolation policy for nurses, doctors - Prof Poku
Ghana's active cases rise to 9,534
Medical Director of the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH), Professor Baffour Kofi Poku, has disclosed that many health professionals in the facility have tested positive for coronavirus.
He attributed this to the rising number of positive cases recorded in the health facility.
According to him, per the Ministry of Health directive, these infected health professionals are to go into isolation for 2 weeks, recover before resuming work again.
This, he said, has had dire consequences on their productivity which may lead to the closure of the emergency unit of the health facility.
He, therefore, called on the Ministry of Health to review the two weeks isolation policy.
In an interview with JoyNews, Medical Director of the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital "We have been recording large numbers of those who are suspected and we test them. For instance, on Sunday, we had 14 suspected patients and 13 tested positive. The following day, we had 48 suspected cases and 37 were tested positive so that’s how fast we are recording the positives…
"Once you get infected, the directive is that, let that person stay away for 2 weeks, recover before he comes back to work. We don’t want any doctor or nurse transmitting the infection to patients or other workers...I think probably the ministry may have to revise that directive now and see whether they can shorten the number of days because a lot of our workers are getting infected," myjoyonline.com quoted him.
Prof Baffour Kofi Poku indicated that "We [health professionals] are stressed but we are doing our best and I only pray that we don’t get to a situation where we may be compelled to say that we have closed down the emergency unit."
Meanwhile, the latest update from the Ghana Health Service (GHS) shows that the country's active cases have shot up to 9,534 while a total of 1,287 have died from the virus.
Ghana's active cases rise to 9,534