Dr. Pascal Kingsley Mwin, a medical doctor at the Bulenga Health Centre and Director of Health Services of the Wa East District in the Upper West region has narrated an incident that has left him worried and given him nightmares in his line of work as a medical practitioner.
He said his inability to save a woman in labour and her baby being transported to the Wa Regional Hospital in an ambulance is what continues to haunt him with sleepless nights.
According to him, the logistical constraints at the Bulenga Health Centre made it impossible to hold the woman there who had been transferred from a CHPS (Community-Based Health Planning and Services) compound elsewhere and therefore needed to be transferred to the hospital in Wa.
Speaking to Ilyaas Al-Hasan, GhanaWeb's Upper West Regional correspondent on Wednesday, July 27, in an interview, the medical practitioner stated that along the way, the condition of the woman exacerbated requiring urgent attention.
He narrated the chilling story of how he had to improvise to operate upon the woman who was in labour using a razor blade to try to save her life and that of her baby in the ambulance, given the circumstance.
"During my first familiarisation tour to Bulenga sub-district in June 2022, I was welcomed with the reality of an unfortunate case when I was addressing the staff of the biggest health centre in Bulenga. A referral from one of the CHPs about 2hrs from the health centre. An ambulance eventually got there close to 5 hours after initiation of the call and so the case was transported via tricycle and midway, the ambulance took over."
"This was a labour case, mother collapsed twice, team resuscitated her whilst en route to the health centre. Fortunately, I was around and had to truncate my visit to attend to the case, this was not a case that could be managed there and so I joined the ambulance redirecting en route to Wa hospital whilst together with my team resuscitating the patient with all the dangling amidst the bad road. Halfway through the journey, she had an arrest. CPR commenced but was unsuccessful. In my quest to save the baby, I sought consent from the husband who was with us in the ambulance to perform a perimortem c-section," Dr. Pascal Kingsley Mwin recounted.
The medical practitioner disclosed he was forced to improvise with a razor blade to operate on the woman due to the lack of the necessary medical equipment needed to perform such a procedure in the ambulance at the time.
He expressed regret that even though he performed the procedure to successfully remove the baby, both mother and child could not make it due to the shortage of oxygen and lack of resuscitation equipment in the ambulance to save them.
He says he has since been having nightmares over the incident knowing he could have saved the woman and the baby given a well-equipped hospital in the district, instead of having to transport her to Wa for medical attention that was not beyond his capacity to handle.
"He (the husband) agreed and without instruments, I requested a new blade and operated on her. Baby (was) out requiring intensive resuscitation as apgar was near no survival. We run out of oxygen and there was no resuscitation stuff for the baby. The story? We lost both baby and mother. I have since had nightmares thinking yes, we could have saved her and the baby if we had a hospital," he lamented.
He emphasised that the lack of a befitting district hospital was depriving the district of EmONC (Emergency Obstetric and Newborn Care) and BEmONC (Basic Emergency Obstetric and Newborn Care) services due to structural, logistics, and human resource challenges that are making it difficult to prevent avoidable maternal and infant mortalities in the area.
He, therefore, made a passionate appeal to authorities and philanthropists to help in the upgrade of the health centre to a status of a polyclinic whilst waiting for the completion of the Agenda 111 District Hospital in the area adding that, the district urgently needs an operating theatre in order to save lives.
With a land mass of about 4,240 Square km representing 17.3% of the total land mass in the region, the Wa East District is one of the most deprived districts in the Upper West region including, but not limited to, lack of health care facilities, bad road network, lack of potable drinking water, amongst others.
As the only doctor providing health care delivery for the over 93,000 population in the area, Dr. Pascal Kingsley Mwin bemoans his inability to perform to his maximum capacity due to logistical constraints at the health centre.
"I am the only doctor serving the over 93,000 population and very incapacitated to operate fully within my potential. It is sad to see avoidable mortalities, especially maternal and neonatal due to a lack of district hospitals," he told GhanaWeb.
A medical doctor at the Bulenga Health Centre, Dr. Pascal Kingsley Mwin