The introduction of mobile clinics by the Ghana Health Service (GHS) deserves to be commended. It is another step towards bridging the gap in terms of accessing health care especially for communities that hitherto do not have means of accessing this important service.
As we understand, the Mobile Clinic service dubbed “Onuador” is expected to cater for general medical care, dentistry, ophthalmology and audiology.
These clinics on wheels would be deployed on outreach campaigns through which medical personnel are expected among others to provide interactive health education in communities in order to promote healthy life style and prevent diseases.
The team will as well provide emergency treatment to members of the community who will require such services as well as offer screening and treatment for general medical conditions, among others.
Health is life and one sure way of improving the quality of lives of the people is through timeous delivery of critical health care. And whiles we commend government and related agencies for the initiative, we want to remind the handlers of these expensive equipment to take good care in handling them.
This country has seen many good initiatives go wrong due largely to mismanagement and poor maintenance culture.
There are countless instances of public assets being diverted for purposes other than which they were procured. There have also been cases of state vehicles, ambulances etc being used to cart cassava from private farms among other. Ghanaians are also very familiar with the draining of fuel from government vehicles and the pillage of other items meant to help the make the work of public officers easy.
Several assets have also been left to rot away due to the lack of maintenance. We hope similar fate does not befall these Medical vans. We would like to urge the GHS to ensure regular supplies of essential drugs, equipment and other important accoutrement needed to make the work of the medical team go on unhindered.
And of what use is a mobile clinic when it cannot provide the needed service?.
Often such laudable programmes which promise hopes for the people are abandoned midway mainly due to the lack of funds. In this instance funds to fuel the vans, to restock essentials as well as maintain the vehicles should be the concern of GHS.
We equally want to urge the authorities to do effective targeting so that areas where the services of these mobile clinics are needed benefit. It would be out of place to allocate these vans especially in urban centers where healthcare is easily accessible.
Millions of our populace are cut off from this essential service and it is important these vans reach them to bring them relief. We also call for a plan to ensure the sustainability and perhaps the expansion of the programme in future. It should be possible to expand and even reach the urban areas some day in future.
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