The Yendi Municipal Hospital has organised an open-day at the hospital and was attended by heads of government institutions, Imams, Pastors, Chiefs, representatives of political parties, staff of the hospital security men among others
It was aimed at making the people in the area to share with the management of the hospital their thoughts for them to improve their performance.
This is the second time Management organised an open-day after the maiden one was organized in April, 2017 within the same premises.
Dr. Abdulai Seidu Ayuba, the Medical Superintendent of the Hospital indicated that the history of the hospital engagement with some sections of the community was embroiled in negative and dangerous polemics thst must be reversed for the good of the facility.
He said judicial notice was taken of the bitter antecedents including; the prepared audio tape to incite the community without justification, attacking staff at some points, issues concerning services with staff among others.
He noted that the health sector was a peculiar environment with its peculiar challenges and people often misunderstood them.
He said a good example was the Drug Procurement Framework policy, which does not allow any facility in the country to procure drugs from any other source apart from taking the supplies from the Regional Medical Stores (RMS) through a distribution system known as Last Mile Distribution.
He indicated that though it was a laudable policy, the implementation was fraught with some challenges and if the RMS had no medicines, the facilities could not work out alternative arrangements, but to wait until RMS get supplies.
Dr Ayuba announced that notwithstanding the challenges, the Out Patients Department (OPD) attendance in 2016 was 67, 119, in 2017 - 69, 879 and in 2018 - 57, 695 so far.
In an address Hajia Hadjara Haruna, the Yendi Municipal Director of Health Service said they were to provide quality to the people when they were sick, indicating that their main challenge was the inability of the people to report issues confronting them to the management.
She said the open-day was for the community to provide suggestions to enhance quality service and appealed to people in the area to cooperate with the staff for them to work as a team.
She said they had Health Centres and CHPs compounds within the zones that needed the cooperation of the community to work as a team for better quality health delivery.
In an address on his behalf Dr John Bertson Eleeza the Regional Director of services indicated that the open-day was going to be a policy for all the hospitals in the region to set aside days to do it two times in a year.
He reminded them that the facility was for them and not the health staff as such they should cooperate with the workers.
Dr. Bertson Eleeza said the hospital should have had not less than six doctors, but they have only two doctors and announced that for 2019 the Region had no problem about Anti-Snake Serum because such drugs were served to the health facilities for the year.
He appealed to them to volunteer to donate blood for the hospital blood bank to serve the community.
Dr. Braimah Baba Abubakari Deputy Director Clinical Care said the hospital laboratory might have all the equipment for the test, but the patients had to pay for the chemicals used because they were not covered by National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) services.
Alhaji Hammed Abubakari Yussuf Yendi Municipal Chief Executive appealed to the community to report their problems to management of the hospital and not to report on social media.
He said the Assembly planned to contract a plant for oxygen in the hospital so that they would not go to Tamale and Kumasi for oxygen.
During open forum, the people complained about the hospital's mortuary refrigerators that down since 2017 without replacement with dead bodies sent to Tamale Hospital mortuary.