Korle Bu Dialysis Centre Resumes Full Operation This Week
The Dialysis Centre of the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital is expected to resume full operation following its closure last week.
This comes as a relief to renal patients who depend on the facility for survival.
The closure was necessitated by a delay in the delivery of a significant quantity of essential consumables for dialysis from the Tema Port.
In a statement over the weekend, the hospital relayed that the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) and Ghana Supply Company were providing vital support to expedite this clearance on an emergency basis.
“As a result, we anticipate that the outpatient section of our Dialysis Centre will return to full operations early next week. While we had initially hoped to have these supplies cleared from the port two weeks ago, procedural lapses and documentation issues on the part of the shipping line, unfortunately, caused a delay in the clearance.”
Due to that, it said the dialysis operations had temporarily been shifted with some of the patients dialyzed at the National Cardiothoracic Centre of the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital.
The hospital further apologized to their patients and clients for any inconvenience, adding that proactive measures had been taken to forestall recurrence.
“To prevent future shortages, and improve our service delivery and cost efficiency, the Minister of Health, Hon. Dr. Bernard Okoe Boye, has procured 30 additional dialysis machines with a year’s supply of consumables, for Korle Bu. The specifications of the new machines will allow us to access their essential consumables from the open market at competitive prices.”
The closure was earlier attributed to government challenges in honouring its commitment to incentives instituted for the treatment of renal patients; however, the claim was shot down by the Chief Executive Officer of the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA), Dr Aboagye Dacosta.
“The NHIA has kept to the promise and delivered on payments to selected facilities on dialysis. The problem at Korle Bu is not NHIA.
“Let’s all seek clarity from the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital leadership. Facilities that submitted claims on the dialysis platform/portal have received their payments,” he said in a Facebook post.
