The Korle Bu Teaching Hospital (KBTH) says it will only attend to emergency and life-threatening surgeries due to shortage of healthcare staff.

The Public Relations Officer of the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, Mustapha Salifu explained that some staff members have been deployed to other health facilities to help treat and manage COVID-19 cases in the country.

He assured the public that the hospital will resume full operations when the COVID-19 situation is under control.

“The number of our staff has reduced. This is because some of them have been mobilised to support the national fight against COVID-19. The ones we have left attend to urgent cases, such as accidents. So patients whose lives are not under threat can wait. When we are out of the woods, and there is little pressure, we can attend to them.”

The Ghana Medical Association (GMA) had earlier bemoaned the alarming rate of infection among its members.

The Association noted that this could have an adverse impact on the country’s health system given their frontline role in the fight against the pandemic.

The Association in a statement issued in July last year noted that more than 150 medical doctors and dentists had tested positive for COVID-19 since the outbreak of the disease in Ghana in March 2020.

Four of its members had also succumbed to the virus that same month.

Frontline health workers risk their lives on a daily basis, trying to fight the pandemic.

COVID-19 Fight

President Akufo-Addo had also indicated that in order to restore normalcy in the country, there was the need to strictly adhere to the COVID-19 protocols as well as get vaccinated against the virus.

“The vaccine, together with strict compliance with the safety protocols, is what will allow us to open up our country again, and embark on the quest to restore normalcy to our lives and livelihoods,” he said.

In this light, the government has so far facilitated the vaccination of 200,000 persons.

Ghana targeted 570,000 people in the first phase of the vaccination, but indications are that it will exceed this target.

The country’s ultimate target is to vaccinate 20 million persons so as to achieve herd immunity.