Side view of the Kulungungu Health Centre
Health workers posted to the Kulungungu Health Centre located in the Pusiga District of the Upper East Region are refusing to report to the health facility due to poor infrastructure and lack of staff accommodation.
The officer in-charge of the Kulungungu Health Centre, Beatrice Bakomdi Yaro, who revealed this to DAILY GUIDE, narrated that even the few who report to the centre upon their posting prefer living in the Bawku Municipality and travel on daily basis to Kulungungu to work, a situation which is affecting the staff output.
The distance from Bawku to Kulungungu is about 15 kilometres and staff will have to ride on motorbikes or join a three-wheeled motorised metallic carts (popularly known as motorkings), the only available public means of transport to the health centre.
“Here, there are no taxis. Our taxis are the ‘motorkings’. So you can imagine how a staff wearing white and sitting on a dusty ‘motorking’ on this rough road to Kulungungu will look like after the journey,” she bemoaned.
The Kulungungu Health Centre is located close to the Kulungungu border and so clients from the Kulungungu community, as well as nearby communities located in the Republic of Burkina-Faso, depend on this facility for their health needs.
There is also a problem with water supply at the centre, which Madam Bakomdi Yaro disclosed, is a big challenge hampering quality healthcare delivery in the facility.
“If there is no water, you can imagine taking care of clients, where are you supposed to have your hands washed so you are likely to transfer whatever you have carried from one client to another client, thereby, bringing about cross-infections,” she explained.
The Kulungungu Health Centre attends to a lot of people on a daily basis because of the presence of the border between Ghana and Burkina Faso and yet the area for years has seen very little development.
FROM Ebo Bruce-Quansah, Kulungungu