Clifford Veng, the Sissala East Municipal Director of Health Services in the Upper West district, has voiced concerns regarding the hospital’s lack of a morgue.
He claimed that because the facility lacks a mortuary, officials are forced to store bodies in undesignated locations, sometimes even in the same wards as patients and employees.
This was revealed by Clifford Veng during the Sissala East municipality’s 2023 health performance meeting in Tumu.
“When death occurs at the municipal hospital, the dead are supposed to be separated from the living immediately but in the case of our municipality, the situation is different.
“Corpses stay over 24 hours in undesignated areas pending the time relative will come for them,” he revealed.
“Mortuary services with its benefits in the municipality are necessary when there is a death because some families need to preserve the deceased for a while so they can prepare appropriately for the funeral rites,” he continued.
Under the topic “Of fostering collaboration: engaging stakeholders in reducing maternal and perinatal mortalities through a resilient healthcare system,” the Sissala East Municipal Health Sector performance review for 2023 was conducted.
Clifford Veng listed some of the accomplishments that health professionals and their stakeholders had accomplished throughout the years in providing high-quality care to the public.
The director of health services for Sissala East Municipality discussed the actions they made during the year under review.
He claimed that in order to detect and treat cancer early on, breast screenings for teenage girls were done in schools.
As per his statement, they have also gathered information on the number of foreign migrants, whose daily arrival influences the distribution of resources and influences the metrics that they have diligently strived to attain over time.
Clifford Veng noted two further challenges in addition to the difficulty of the municipality lacking a morgue.
The X-ray machine at the municipal hospital is out-of-date and now broken, resulting in low-quality images. He brought up the poor quality of laboratory services available to residents in Sissala East.
The town only has 52 community health plans (CHPS), eight health centers, a polyclinic, and three laboratories to manage the hospital. He begged the municipality to establish more laboratory survivors.
Fuseini Yakubu Batong, the chief executive of Sissala East Municipality, stated that the government and the municipality are steadfastly committed to raising the standard of health service delivery within the municipality.
