Pressure Group, Occupy Ghana has expressed its displeasure over government’s delay in distributing ambulances parked in front of the State House.
96 out of the 275 ambulances are currently parked at the State House awaiting distribution.
The group, in a statement, wondered why the ambulances were left idling in the wake of concerns over a shortage in the number of working ambulances in the country.
Read below full statement
GHANAIANS WILL NOT BE SPECTATORS OF PARKED AMBULANCES
Last year, the direness of medical care in Ghana was heightened significantly after several high-profile deaths due to a lack of beds in our hospitals and/or lack of a functioning emergency response system.
In the brouhaha that followed these deaths, OccupyGhana® and Citi FM petitioned the President on 27th July, 2018, to among other things, complete and operationalise several uncompleted hospitals, set up a bed management and a functioning emergency response system. Regarding the emergency response system, we did not only ask for ambulances and paramedics but we especially noted the need for the establishment of a Command Centre to coordinate and direct the supply of emergency services. We saw that as the first step in setting up an emergency response service.
In the year since then, a few of the hospitals have been completed but not fully operationalised. According to the Special Development Initiatives Ministry, 500 paramedics are being trained and due to graduate soon. The government has taken delivery of 48 ambulances out of 307 that have been budgeted for. However, since their arrival several weeks ago, they have been parked in front of the State House. Also, contrary to what the President promised last year, there is still no Command Centre. We also do not know the status of the bed management system.
Like most Ghanaians, OccupyGhana® wonders why in light of the fact that the country has so few working ambulances, these new ambulances would be left idling before the State House instead of being out in the constituencies being used to save lives. In a recent interview, even the Public Relations Officer of the National Ambulance Service (NAS) had no idea when the ambulances would be released by the government for deployment.
Finally, we heard this last Friday from the Minister of Health who said that distribution was delayed because the ambulances were being received in batches. More clarity came from the Special Development Initiatives Ministry which gave a rough timeline of when the ambulances will be deployed and why they are still parked in front of the State House. Three of the steps being taken deserve further consideration. According to the ministry the ambulances have not been deployed because:
- they are being fitted with trackers;
- receiving points are being set up; and
- paramedics are still being trained.
We can excuse the fitting of the trackers. We can even excuse the training of the paramedics. But what cannot be excused is the lack of receiving points for these ambulances.
In emergency care, the stepwise care of the critically ill or injured goes by algorithms that are known as the “ABCDs.” They are important because following them leads to the saving of lives.
In establishing an emergency service, that same order is needed to prevent chaos. Ambulances are a very important part of an emergency response service but even more important are the receiving points or what we termed “Command Centres” in our petition to the president a year ago. Once you have that, the pieces that make up an emergency response service are easier to arrange as you get them. If we had a Command Centre, we would have been ready even before the ambulances arrived. Instead, these ambulances are gracing the courtyard of the State House in all their splendour. They have become eye candy for a desolate populace whose voices precipitated a rapid acquisition of these ambulances.
This demands us to ask these very pertinent questions:
- Are there plans afoot to set up a central command centre or is the national Ambulance Service going to be the de facto Command Centre?
- Are these receiving points going to be command centres or just places where the ambulances are housed?
- Is there a bed management in place to allow the ambulance drivers to take patients to facilities that have available beds?
- Will the ambulances be equipped with suitable mapping technology to help them find patients?
- What plans have been made for constituencies with no hospitals? Where will their emergency cases go?
We did applaud the government for its response in making these ambulances available in the first place. But we equally express our disappointment that the ambulances since arrival have been inactive. Thus, we ask these questions because these ambulances just sitting there while people are dying, is a mark of gross irresponsibility and paints a vivid picture of lack of completeness in the thinking that went behind acquiring the ambulances in the first place.
It is enshrined in the Constitution, Article 34(2) that the citizenry has a Right to Good Health Care. How does parking the buses in front of the State House ensure that?
We rallied behind the President to his clarion call to be citizens. We will not settle to be spectators, especially to parked ambulances. Accordingly, we demand answers and no excuse but prompt and immediate action.
Yours in the service of God and Country
OccupyGhana®
Source: King Edward Ambrose Washman Addo/Peacefmonline.com/Ghana
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Needless accusation, just want to be heard that you don't take sides. 96 to be shared among 275 constituencies? Let wait patiently for the arrival of the remaining before distribution to all constituencies.
Our leaders are just not thinking! So are they telling us that they never had plans or modalities of how to distribute these ambulances before ordering them? Myopic leadership! I am very disappointed! God safe us
It is about time Ghanaians credit our leaders and government with little intel@ligen*ce. What will be our position if the government had not imported the ambulances at all? where were we before 2017? Did the need for ambulances just dawn on us as a people? This proves that citizens demand more from a government whom they see to be performing. But nonperforming government is always ignored
Do we really know what we want? Ghana, a nation of 30 million talkativeness.
Too much talking and no patience in Ghana. Occupy Ghana, learn from the Aisha Huang affair. We need to be patient sometimes! OccupygGhana made a lot of noise about the Aisha Huang galamsey story! In the end would they prefer Aisha Huang in jail or the 200million yuan debt write off? patience is a virtue kofi Bentil and Franklin Cudjoe!
NDC should stop the ***barred word*** propaganda and just observe what government will do. After all the NDC imported ambulances that could not be used to transport people why was the Occupy Ghana leadership quiet about that. Let them bow their heads in shame for their lies and double standards.
Which reasonable government would be watching pregnant women die while ambulance procured with the people's tax money are parked waiting for 2020 campaign. Power is more important than the life of pregnant women.
PLS GIVE PEACE A CHANCE TO LIVE, AMBULANCES AREN'T NKONFEM TO FLY TO BURKINA FASO, IT'S SITTING HERE IN GHANA. SO RELAX
IF YOU STAMPEDE THE GOVT. INTO WRONG DISTRIBUTION OF THE AMBULANCES AND THEN TURN AROUND TO SAY SOME REGIONS WERE NEGLECTED AS IN THE CASES OF ROAD CONSTRUCTION, IT WOULD NOT BE A FAIR BLAME ON THE GOVT. WE KNOW THAT ALL GOVT. MUST THREAD CAUTIOUSLY IN THIS FREE FALL POLITICAL FIGHT UNIQUE TO GHANA. OTHER COUNTRIES WANT THINGS TO GO WELL FOR THEM , BUT OPPOSITION IN GHANA WANT EVEN THE BLACK STARS TO LOSE AND BE DISGRACED FOR POLITICAL EXPEDIENCE WHY???
Can the Occupy Ghana people tell us how to distribute 96 ambulances among 275 constituencies? I hope the same people will not come back to ask why constituency A was given and ambulance and B was left out. The minister for special initiatives came out to assign reasons for the non distribution of the ambulances and l think the reasons were valid enough not to warrant the statement issued by Occupy Ghana