The Director of Health Services for the Sissala East Municipality in the Upper West Region, Clifford Veng, has expressed concern about the absence of a mortuary at the Sissala East Municipal Hospital.
At the 2023 health performance conference of the Sissala East municipality in Tumu, Veng stated that this lack of a mortuary facility compels hospital authorities to store dead bodies in unassigned areas, which sometimes include the same wards as patients and staff.
Veng stated that when someone dies at the municipal hospital, the body should be kept separate from the living immediately.
However, according to myjoyonline, he revealed that in the Sissala East municipality, corpses are often kept in an unassigned area for over 24 hours, pending the arrival of the deceased's relatives.
Veng noted that some families need to preserve the deceased for some time to prepare for the funeral rites, which necessitates mortuary services with its benefits.
The 2023 Sissala East Municipal Health Sector performance review was held under the theme "Of fostering collaboration: engaging stakeholders in reducing maternal and perinatal mortalities through a resilient healthcare system."
Veng commended health workers and their stakeholders for their progress in providing excellent service to the community and listed some of the successes they have achieved over the years.
During the annual review period, Veng explained that they performed breast cancer screenings for adolescent girls in schools and gathered data to count foreign migrants, whose numbers are constantly increasing.
This affects resource allocation, and their influx tends to undermine the indicators they have worked hard to achieve over the years.
Veng mentioned two other issues apart from the lack of a mortuary in the municipality.
According to him, the X-ray machine at the municipal hospital is outmoded and now malfunctioning, causing low-quality imaging.
Additionally, there are insufficient laboratory services in the Sissala East for the people noting there are only three laboratories to cater to the hospital, eight health centers, a polyclinic, and 52 community health planning (CHPS) centers.
The director called for additional laboratory services to be established in the municipality.
The Sissala East Municipal Chief Executive, Fuseini Yakubu Batong, spoke about the government's and the Sissala East municipality's unwavering commitment to improving health service delivery quality in the municipality.
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Lack of a mortuary at the facility forces authorities to keep corpses at undesignated places