The Municipal Chief Executive (MCE) for Builsa North, Madam Vida Akantagriwen Anaab, has reiterated appeals by residents in the area to government to renovate the Sandema Hospital for effective health service delivery.
She said the facility needed urgent renovation to enable it to effectively render services to its teeming clients within and outside the Municipality.
She said the current state of the 93-year-old facility was a looming danger, and called for urgent attention from the government to renovate the facility which is the only referral centre for the entire Builsa area.
Madam Anaab, who is a retired Midwife and former staff of the Hospital, made the appeal at a Regional Inter-sectorial meeting organized at the instance of the Upper East Regional Coordinating Council (RCC) in Bolgatanga.
The meeting, which brought together Heads of Departments and Agencies in the Region, including Municipal and District Chief Executives, offered participants the opportunity to discuss critical issues in the various sectors and find solutions to them.
The MCE expressed concern about the leaking roof of the entire hospital, saying “The entire facility leaks terribly when it rains. The hospital needs help.”
Even though the Ghana News Agency in Sandema, the Municipal capital, had over the period churned out reports about the plight of the Hospital and the need for urgent renovation, there has not been any support.
Apart from the Builsa area, the facility receives medical and surgical cases from Yagaba-Kubori in the Mamprugu-Moagduri District of the North East Region and parts of the Upper West Region.
The facility was established in 1930 to cater for residents’ health needs and was later upgraded to a Health Centre in 1970 and then a District Hospital in 1992.
The Hospital has not seen any renovation to date.
Madam Anaab told stakeholders at the meeting that there were visible cracks on walls, broken louvre blades and doors, exposed electrical cables and obsolete medical equipment which needed to be replaced.
The retired Midwife emphasized the need for stakeholders, chiefs, government and Non-Governmental Organizations, and philanthropists to rally support to fix the Hospital.
She said the Builsa North Municipality was not a beneficiary of the ‘Agenda 111’ project initiated by government to construct 111 Hospitals across Districts in the country without Hospitals and stressed the need to maintain the Sandema Hospital.
