AUTHORITIES AT the LEKMA Polyclinic are forced to bury placenta of mothers who have been delivered of babies at the compound of the clinic due to lack of infrastructure such as multi-purpose incinerator.
The situation has practically turned the compound into a cemetery full of buried placentas.
And because the clinic has no fence wall, some dogs have also taken advantage of the situation to dig out the buried placenta to feed on, compounding the misery of the authorities at the facility.
This, they say has brought some uneasy calm at the facility because waste that has to be disposed of using the multi-purpose incinerator is brought outside for burial, a development they described as very unfortunate.
Justine Deynoo, the health system administrator of the clinic made this known to the DAILY HERITAGE in an interviewafter the clinic took delivery of some equipment from the US ambassador�s special program worth of $10, 000 yesterday.
�Currently, we don�t even have a placenta pit, so when women deliver, the placenta is buried outside, but if we had a placenta pit, it should go there, that is the appropriate way of disposing of that waste,� she lamented.
According to her, �burying the placenta outside is a no, no, no, because dogs can come and dig them out. We need a multipurpose incinerator. Go out to the left hand side and you will see the mess out there, the bin, if we had a multi-purpose incinerator, some of the hospital waste need not come outside, we just put it in the incinerator and burn it.�
She described the manner of disposing of the placenta as inappropriate and seized the opportunity to appeal to philanthropists and stakeholders to come to their aid to resolve the devastating phenomenon.
The DAILY HERITAGE also gathered that herd of cattle have turned the hospital into their grazing field and sometimes prevent the authorities from entering their office and leave their droppings behind to compound their challenges.
�We have herds of cows coming here, they will come and at times you can�t even enter your office, because they are at the entrance and they will leave their droppings all over. We have made a number of complaints, but they keep coming around,� the administrator further lamented.
She also intimated that, the acute water shortage that was reported to have hit three wards of the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital for the past two weeks, forcing patients and nurses to shuttle between the affected wards and the Maternity Ward is analogous to what her outfit is facing at the clinic.
�We are facing water problems too here,� and said �how do we run a hospital without water. So if someone will assist us with a borehole we will be very grateful.�
Giving a brief background of the hospital, she said the LEKMA Polyclinic was commissioned in December, 2012, but it was more or less an empty building �you know you can�t run a health facility with an empty building.�
According to her, �We did not get any seed money from anywhere so we have to go out and request for assistance so the deputy director of nursing service (DDNS) at the municipal office through her efforts linked us up to the Ambassador�s Special Health program and out of the 200 applications, 12 were selected and LEKMA Polyclinic was one of them. They gave us a total amount of $10, 000 or GH�300, 000.00.�
The director of health at LEKMA, Dr. Leticia Asumani Wiafe told the paper that the issue of disposing biological waste in the area is one of the biggest challenges facing health facilities in the municipality.
She told the paper that LEKMA through the MCE is doing all it could to get a placenta pit saying, �we need actually a multipurpose incinerator and I have discussed it with the MCE, not just this facility, but for all the facilities in LEKMA.�
The MCE, Seth Badu Tawiah told the paper that the clinic which is yet to be completed fully has been awarded on contract and plans are far advanced for the fencing to be done.
Some of the items the hospital received were delivery beds, examination couches, sterilizers, baby wing scales, among others.
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